


In Vain Conceit

by Ywain Penbrydd (penbrydd)



Series: Vexation of Spirit [3]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), The Lone Gunmen (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Chair Sex, Everyone is Bisexual, Exhaustion, False Identity, Hallucinations, Light Angst, Loud Sex, M/M, Meet the Family, Mistaken Identity, Porn With Plot, Secret Relationship, Secret Relationship Fail, Synaesthetic erotica, Team as Family, nerds in lust, nobody you like dies, television quality depictions of hacking, the other half
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-01 06:43:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 32,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15137378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penbrydd/pseuds/Ywain%20Penbrydd
Summary: Vanity's been arrested, after theft of data from another source, but Garcia doesn't think they've got the right person. Neither does Langly.





	1. Chapter 1

The first door opened from the outside, but the next one didn't.  
  
"It's me, asshole," Langly barked into the panel beside the steel door set in steel-reinforced stone, and once he closed the outer door, he could hear the grind of the bolts drawing back. No one in the cellar, which meant one of them had gone up to the control room.  
  
As he came up from the cellar, Byers was waiting for him, at the top of the stairs, pistol trained through the final open vault door, the third line of defence in that route.   
  
"It's me and only me," Langly promised. "But, you know that, because you can see tha -- Oh. Right." He sighed and spit out the cotton padding, tugged off the wig.  
  
"Get in here and shut the door. We may have a problem." Frohike's voice, but no Frohike, which answered the question of where he was.  
  
"The Black Queen got back to us while you were out. I'll admit I pretended to be you, so she'd talk to us," Byers explained, as Langly peeled off a few layers and started looking more like himself.  
  
"What'd she say that we don't already know?" Langly asked, making his way through the warehouse toward his desk.  
  
"About a third of that room is Mulder's files. They're low-priority for scanning, because nobody wants to have to admit any of that happened, but the feds are still holding on to them because have you ever known a federal agency to throw out paperwork?"  
  
Langly stopped suddenly in the doorway of the kitchen and Byers walked right into his back. "Son of a bitch. What did she get?"  
  
Byers staggered back a step. "Nobody's sure. Those files aren't individually accounted for, just the cabinets. And they're not consistently numbered, because a lot of them were old by the time Mulder got them, so there's gaps all over. She let us know out of professional courtesy. Because we might be in there. And if they're going through what's left, trying to figure it out--"  
  
"Then I picked the worst week to decide I was going outside." Langly rubbed one eye under his glasses, as he turned around and nudged Byers back another step. "Coffee first. You make it. I'm getting my chair and a hot pad. My legs are killing me. What did she say about Vanity?"  
  
"Nothing." Byers shook his head. "I don't think it is Vanity. You remember the fan club."  
  
"That was my thought." Langly nodded. "Chair. Coffee. Painkillers. I'll meet you at the front in five."

* * *

  
Langly slumped in his chair, vibrations turned up high, with his keyboard in his lap and a hot pad tucked under his legs. One of the second row of screens showed the conversation logs. He'd left the black box plugged in to a throwaway that was isolated from the rest of the network, just in case the Queen had something else to say -- which she had.   
  
First, it was just the holes she'd exploited to get in. She kept hammering him for a few days, until he sorted the last of those -- every fucking time he looked, something else had a bad patch and a new hole. Something something damn kids in technology.   
  
Then, how she'd figured out there was even something there to hit. And that was a point -- if she could figure it out, so could some other people they used to know. Not the eyes that might still be looking for them, but if any one of them got caught and turned... Pride had always been his sin, he figured, and purged some in-jokes, diving to the depths of public archival backups to ensure they were clear. That took time, but it hadn't been _difficult_.   
  
And now, she finally had word on the case. Not much -- he was just a contractor and his role was over -- but the heads up that the names on those cases were going to get another look was something, at least. A strong suggestion to keep his head down.  
  
"So how's Special Agent Twink?" Frohike asked, slippers almost silent as he came up behind Langly.  
  
Langly opened his mouth and closed it, blinking a few times before he managed an answer. "Living in a fucking closet with his mother, at a glance. Seriously, I'm pretty sure I had more personal space in our old place, even with both of you up my ass all the time."  
  
"You make with the naked tango, yet?"  
  
"Not actually your business, Frohike." Langly squinted at the choice of words on the screen. Byers had done a pretty good job, mostly by saying as little as possible to keep the conversation going.  
  
"That's a no." Frohike nodded. "World's first fifty-year-old virgin."  
  
"Bullshit. There are still nuns. And I keep telling you it's not even true." Langly pushed his glasses up to rub the bridge of his nose.  
  
"Which is why you can't name any of them, and neither of us have ever caught you, smelled it on you, heard anyone calling for you that wasn't business, heard anyone bragging about you, heard you bragging about them..."  
  
"What happens in my pants stays in my pants."  
  
"What happens in your dreams stays in your dreams, too." Frohike leaned an elbow on the back of the chair as Byers came up with the coffee.  
  
"Byers, tell him I'm not a virgin." Langly grabbed a cup as soon as Byers put down the tray.  
  
"There's only one way I'd know that, and we both know I don't."  
  
"Because I love you to death, but I wouldn't fuck you with someone else's dick." Langly changed the subject by pointing at the screen. "Nobody knows what all of those files are supposed to be. We don't know. She doesn't know. The archivists don't know. Mulder might know, but that's a lot of shit to keep track of, and he's brain damaged anyway. Scully had her memory fucked with so much I couldn't even guess what she knows. There are other people who might know, but I don't have any reason to think they were paying attention -- paperwork is someone else's job. Point is, whoever went in there knew exactly what they were after and where to find it."  
  
"So, either they work there..." Frohike started, and Byers finished the thought.  
  
"Or they've got leverage on someone who does."  
  
"Because the archivists don't know officially, but what they do in their spare time ..." Langly's hands flickered across the keyboard and another screen spawned three windows that he switched between, typing non-stop. "... would be on camera. And she's probably thought of that, but now I've thought of it."  
  
"Wouldn't they have tightened security since that happened?" Byers sipped his own coffee and leaned against the opposite side of the chair from Frohike.  
  
"It's the federal government. You know how long it takes them to even change a roll of toilet paper." Langly spared the quarter second to roll his eyes, because he didn't need to see until he hit enter. "What do we want, a month? Let's try a month."  
  
He hit the release on the chair and leaned forward, knocking Frohike to the side and spilling Byers's coffee, eyes locked on the list of downloads, one file and then the next. "Come on, come on..."  
  
"Breathe, Langly." Frohike grabbed Langly's actual desk chair and sat down. "You're not doing this at ninety-six hundred any more."  
  
"Yeah, and that just means they're not coming back at me at ninety-six hundred, either," Langly snapped, eyes flicking between windows.  
  
"Did you get spotted?" Byers sounded surprised.  
  
"Of course not. But, if it happens... It's not just about how fast I can type any more." Langly shook his head without taking his eyes off the slowly climbing file numbers. Suddenly, his fingers started moving again, terminating in a tiny flourish as he lifted his hand off the keyboard to smack the enter key. "And we're out. One month of surveillance from that camera. Most of it probably of an empty room."  
  
"Throw it across the room," Frohike said, getting up and edging around Byers to take the last cup off the tray. "I've got something that'll cut it down to what we're interested in."  
  
"You know, she's probably already done this," Byers pointed out.  
  
"Fuck her. I'm doing it. She's not going to tell us. You know how this works." Langly dropped the back of the chair without checking behind him and yelled across the room. "Dates and times! I think that's a badge lock, so we don't have to match the face!"  
  
"You still want to match the face," Frohike called back. "Who the hell's going to use their own badge?"  
  
"He's got a point." Byers pulled Langly's desk chair over and sat down. "So. You and Dr Reid?"  
  
"We had dinner, Byers. I haven't left the fucking building since we moved in." Langly hit buttons until the leg rest came back up.  
  
"Hence my concern. Why now?"  
  
"Because for like... eighteen hours I remembered what being alive was like." Langly shook his head and took a swig of coffee. "I got to be me again. I forgot I even missed that."  
  
"Don't do anything stupid, Langly." Byers looked concerned. "It's not going to be a cow's ass, this time, and we don't have any backup."  
  
"Why is it that every time me being stupid comes up, it's always the cow's ass? I'm pretty sure that was Jimmy's fault."  
  
"Okay, how about the fourteen consecutive times you electrocuted yourself in one night? Or the time your sole act of genius got you covered in baby shit? Oh, wait, the time Yves fake shot you and then you almost got real shot?"  
  
"That last one wasn't even my idea. And?" Langly held up a finger under Byers's nose and turned to face it. "Literally anything involving Susanne Modeski. What'd she tie a string to your dingle? Because I seem to recall you walking us all into trouble repeatedly, every time you heard her name."  
  
Byers batted the hand away. "That is my point, Langly. Don't ... _do that_. I made that mistake for all of us, and if I'm honest, I'd do it again, if I had the chance."  
  
"Yeah, see, that's not happening. It's an enjoyable evening, not a whirlwind romance with a side of twenty years of pining." Langly's eyes narrowed. "Besides, _you_ were the one hitting on him."  
  
"I absolutely was not. I've read his work, and I wanted to discuss some of it."  
  
"Climb down from the ivory-coloured plastic tower, Byers. Down here on earth, that's flirting," Langly scoffed, memories of Reid shivering and whining in his sleep unspooling behind his eyes. There were questions he wasn't going to ask. "And good luck, anyway. He doesn't have a computer. He doesn't _want_ one."  
  
"Long live King Ludd." Byers sounded surprised.  
  
"Ludd was a communist. Everything else is slander. Means of production in the hands of the people," Langly muttered, switching windows and pushing a message to Frohike.  
  
"Still, if you're going to go see him again..." Byers trailed off.  
  
"And _I'm_ not supposed to make stupid decisions? What the hell is that, then, _Byers_?" Langly ducked his head and ran both hands through his hair. "Yeah, I know. Don't do it, but if I'm going to do it, leave a way for him to reach us that can't be traced back to us."  
  
"How did you get there, anyway?" Byers asked, watching the screen Frohike was pushing work onto. "I know you didn't walk that."  
  
"No, I only walked about fifteen miles one way and six or seven the other." Langly laughed. "I know the shipment times for a few of our neighbours and hitched a ride most of the way in. Back was a little harder."  
  
"Fifteen? You picked the wrong truck, didn't you?" Byers struggled not to laugh.  
  
"Oh, yeah, yuck it up. I'm lucky I didn't end up in the ass-end of Virginia. I swear to you, that was the right truck. I've been watching everything that comes in or goes out and they've all got GPS. That's how I picked one," Langly complained into his coffee.  
  
"And you still picked the wrong one."  
  
"Fuck you. It was the right one. It just wasn't on the right route for some stupid reason."  
  
"Which makes it the wrong one."  
  
"When the two of you are done bickering like a pair of queens over the last tart," Frohike called across the room, "I've got it cut down to three half-hour segments on three different days."  
  
Langly folded his hands and stretched up over his head. "Give me the times!"  
  
Frohike did, one at a time, and there was silence but for the clattering of Langly's keyboard between them.   
  
"Those are all the same badge number, but that's still not the thief." Langly picked up his coffee as the connection closed behind him. "It's a woman, but she's taller than you, Frohike. Five foot six, according to her employee file. Also according to the file, that last date was the last time she checked out of the building... But, she wasn't fired for two weeks."  
  
"There's two ways this could go," Byers started, and Langly cut him off.  
  
"She's in cahoots and she ran, or she's dead." His eyes darted to Byers. "You know which of those I prefer."


	2. Chapter 2

Reid sat upside-down on the couch, legs crossed over the back, head hanging over the seat cushion, eyes closed, as he scrawled words on the notebook folded open against his leg as fast as he thought of them. Mistakes were something to worry about later, if he ever bothered to send it. Mostly he just wanted to get it onto the page before the words -- and the feeling -- got away from him.  
  
_My fingers still remember the texture of your skin, and with my eyes closed, I can almost convince myself I feel it. Soft and cool, and I wonder how my hands differ from your memories in the places that you're warm. I remember the sensation of you pressed tight against my thigh, the way you trembled as you chased that pressure, the rhythm of your thighs flexing against mine. With my eyes closed, I can still feel the sound of your pleasure in my mouth, the sound becoming vibration in my bones, a physical transmission of your desire that reached up along my cheeks to brush against my eyes. I want to kiss you again, more, longer... I want to taste your mouth and the coffee-bittered air between us until visions of the divine burst across the insides of my eyelids. I want to watch your lips around my name, when it's the only word you remember._  
  
He tucked his head and swung his legs to the side, twisting to sprawl down the couch with his heels propped on the wall. _Slightly_ less upside-down. His eyes stayed closed as he rolled the memories back and forth in his mind.

How had he come to this?

He knew the ache in his chest and the twinge under his fingernails. The choking grip of the dread that hung behind the metaphorical forearm he'd slammed across that doorway in his mind.

Was this what he wanted? Hadn't he just said he wasn't doing this again?  
  
He told himself it wasn't the same, but he could feel it in his teeth. He told himself he wouldn't let it end like that, but it wasn't really up to him, was it? And yet, there was the eternal nagging sense that if he'd said anything else in that moment, now years past -- anything but 'yes' -- he'd be living a whole other life, by now. A life in which his ribs didn't ache at the combination of dark hair and blood, in photos from other cases. A life in which he didn't know the sound of that one specific agony in his own voice. A life in which just one more person was alive, regardless of how anything else might have gone, afterward.  
  
But, this wasn't like that at all.  
  
Was it?

* * *

The papers piled on his desk weren't going to grade themselves, no matter how much he wished they would, some days, and Reid conceded the point, pen in one hand and coffee in the other. His students weren't stupid, but he'd noticed that some of them had very ... fixed perspectives that were likely to end in misjudgements in the field. Wild imagination could be difficult to temper, but someone who staunchly refused not only to look outside the box, but to even consider there was a box, was not ... He caught that thought and chuffed in amusement. 'Wasn't going to go far', he'd thought. And yet, that seemed to be the straight track into bureaucratic positions -- people who didn't have the eye for field work, but could defend their every decision with policy and protocol. It was his job, he thought, to try to get people to at least recognise that the box existed. Not technically what he was teaching, but still a fundamental part of understanding the content.  
  
The phone interrupted his contemplations, and he considered ignoring it. Succeeded, in fact, until the machine picked up and he heard Garcia's voice.  
  
"Reid? I know you're not supposed to be working, but I really need another set of eyes on this -- your eyes on this. It's bad. It's Vanity."  
  
He grabbed the phone so fast the pile of graded work nearly toppled. "Garcia? What's going on?"  
  
"Lisa Ortiz, over in computer crimes, was arrested this morning. That's... She used to be Vanity. I know her, Reid. She didn't do this." Garcia's voice was a panicked hiss.  
  
"Okay, let's assume you're right. What's the evidence?" Reid picked up the base of the phone as he got up from the desk. "I'm getting my shoes, right now. Keep talking to me."  
  
"It's not the case we had. It's a different one. They're saying she went after the Department of Defence, last night. The signature's the same -- she's the obvious choice -- but it's not her!" The sound of Garcia's typing was fast and loud, with tiny pauses as she read the screen.  
  
"Where is the information coming from?" Reid thought he might regret asking.  
  
"I have what was presented for the arrest warrant. The rest of it is the DoD's, and ... I don't really want to stick my finger in that right now."  
  
"Can you reach our friend? Is it safe to try?" Reid juggled the phone and his jacket. "I'm coming in. I can give you about ten hours, and then I have to finish this grading before tomorrow's class. But, if we're not done, you'll see me again as soon as I can get back down, tomorrow. I promise you."  
  
"I can probably get him." Garcia sounded like she'd started breathing again. "Thank you."  
  
"I'll be there in ... as fast as I can drive without getting pulled over." Reid put down the phone, grabbed his keys, and ran out the door.

* * *

Reid appeared in the doorway of Garcia's office, having managed to avoid running into anyone else on the way. "Do you mind if I close the door?"  
  
Garcia nearly leapt out of her seat at the sound of his voice, but frantically waved him in. "Please. Close it. Lock it. Duct tape it if you have to." She paused and looked at him. "Are you okay?"  
  
Reid looked down at himself, as he closed the door, realising his shirt was untucked and misbuttoned, and he turned away from Garcia's eyes to fix that. "I was in a hurry. What do you know, so far?"  
  
"Our friend just threw himself in front of the train and figured out what the DoD attack was after -- accounting, of all things. Specifically, repeated and large billing since oh-one." Garcia typed a few lines into one window and waved for Reid to take a seat... that didn't exist. "Our friend seems to think they're looking for former-agent Dana Scully, because of the X-Files connection. I asked him why not Spooky, and he says it's because of, I quote, 'some freaky top-secret shit about the cancer she didn't actually have, and the baby she did'."  
  
Reid moved a stack of files and parked himself on top of a short file cabinet. "As much as I hate conspiracy theories, I'll give him this one, because the files you got for me to read on the flight back from Colorado were... You were right about them. They're solid and well documented cases -- photos, lab reports, interviews, it's all there. If I wanted to dispute the evidence, I suspect I'd be maligning the professional competence of at least fifty people in nine states. Assuming, then, that the evidence is real, the conclusions are ... I'd be very hard pressed to come up with something more _likely_ than Agent Mulder's conclusions."  
  
"I'm... looking at a whole lot of something I don't understand from a friend of our friend, who apparently got a look at the cancer that wasn't. Something medical? Biological?" Garcia opened the file onto another monitor, closer to where Reid sat. "It's the evidence, he says, that Agent Scully is worth pursuing."  
  
"Why the DoD's accounts?" Reid asked, leaning in to squint at what had to have come from Byers. "That doesn't seem like a reasonable place to go looking for a former FBI agent."  
  
"I asked. He said to ask you."  
  
"It's a _pattern_?" Reid looked up in horror, as he remembered Frohike's off-hand correction of his assumptions. "Ask him how common that was. Tell him I'm asking."  
  
"What am I asking?" Garcia blinked. "You skipped a step."  
  
Reid closed his eyes and considered the words. "DoD funding misdirects to conceal persons of interest from other government agencies."  
  
"What?" Garcia spun her chair around to look at Reid.  
  
"Whether or not it's true -- which it may be -- our friend believes it is, and that means there are other people who do as well, given his line of work. And our friend isn't running from a figment, according to documents _you_ put in my hands, which inclines me to think this may not be entirely empty supposition. But, the files referenced in those documents only exist in the room that got robbed in the Vanity case. Which implies there are other digitised files that reference those other files. But, those files have been moved from where they were originally stored. And the case numbers aren't indexed... and that's not the point I was making, sorry. The point is, there's some definite suggestions that someone went in looking for a specific person, in those files, and found some reference to their death or disappearance, and then had the _context_ to chase that to the next place that might show evidence that the disappearance was well-funded and intentional -- or that they're not dead. Whether or not that's Scully is still open to debate, but if what I'm looking at has any basis in reality, that really would be an excellent reason."  
  
"So, multiple thefts of information, potentially regarding a single target -- a person, rather than a place or thing." Garcia paused, plucking a candy from a small, pink kitty cup tucked between monitors. "Unless it's a thing the person disappeared with, in which case, in the end, it's still a person, but it might be a thing in the initial files, but that doesn't matter because we still don't know what the initial files even are."  
  
"Correct." Reid nodded.  
  
"God, how am I supposed to prove she didn't do it, when I don't even know what 'it' is?"  
  
"Did you ever track down the last person in the file room, before the break in?" Reid asked.  
  
"She's wasn't answering the phone, and then with the pressure to stop looking into what was in the files... It wasn't a serial case. We're not supposed to be 'wasting time' on it." Garcia opened a few more documents, making them large enough for Reid to see. "Alondra Metcalfe, much too tall to be our thief, and her badge obviously wasn't used in the break-in. Looks like whoever picked up the case stopped trying to find her and... this case got kicked around a lot. We've only been off it for a few weeks, and it's been passed through four other departments. Nobody wants to get X-Files on them. ... Let's see... Oh, no. No, no, no. As of fifteen minutes ago, this is now a DoD case, because of the link to their other case. Okay, paper copies and then I'm washing my hands, before anyone notices we were in here."  
  
"Alondra Metcalfe who hasn't been answering her phone and wasn't directly involved in the break in..." Reid murmured as the printer started up on the other side of the room. "She's still involved, if she's still missing. Otherwise that's more coincidence than I'm comfortable with."  
  
"Our friend says he's already looked at her. She was fired after not showing up for two weeks." Garcia looked back at Reid, eyes wide with dread.  
  
"Okay, this is our problem, and it's not even our problem because we're not supposed to be involved. It's not even a Bureau case any more. You're not a field agent. I'm supposed to be on leave. It's not going to look good for either of us if we take the obvious next step, here," Reid pointed out.  
  
"I should call JJ," Garcia decided, reaching for her headset. "She'd do it anyway."  
  
"You should call _Rossi_ ," Reid suggested. "Think about how long he's worked here. Of all of us, he might _remember_ some of the people involved in those cases."  
  
Garcia blinked and nodded. "Genius," she said, pointing at him, before she dialled Rossi's number.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CLIFFHANGER TIME. Which means I have not finished writing before I started posting, and there's likely to wind up being continuity errors later, because I suck like that. BRB, writing next chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

"I'm sorry, you'd like me to _what_?" Rossi handed the first coffee from the carrier tray he held to Garcia.  
  
Reid rested his heels on the handle of a file drawer and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Interfere in a Department of Defence case that used to be ours."  
  
"In the name of righting a horrible injustice," Garcia added, shooting Reid a pointed look over the top of the cup, as she took a sip.  
  
Rossi handed Reid the next cup and took the last for himself, tossing the cardboard tray into the nearest bin he could reach. "Okay, sell it to me. What are you doing?"  
  
"All is vanity and vexation of spirit," Reid quoted. "Except the problem is it's not Vanity, and the only people vexed are us. Do you remember the hostage situation a few weeks ago? Stolen files from paper storage?"  
  
"Sure! Who could forget a thief that short?" Rossi nodded, expecting them to continue.  
  
"Okay, well, the security system was rigged by someone who left behind a very particular sequence, and that mark on the wall goes along with it. They point to one of the best bit miners I ever knew -- a woman called Vanity. Except that Vanity works for us, now, and she has for years. She's part of the team that recruited me." Garcia blinked back tears, finally, as the weight of it crashed down on her again. "Lisa Ortiz, over in computer crimes. She's a wonderful person. She'd never hurt anyone. I can't believe she'd be part of something like that."  
  
Reid held out a box of tissues that had been sitting next to him and picked up the story while Garcia tried to pull herself together. "Except Vanity didn't work alone, back then. She had what I've heard referred to as both 'students' and 'acolytes'. We think that one of them may be trying to hunt down someone mentioned in one of the cases stored in that room. The problem is? That cabinet is one of the ones reserved for the X-files, so it's not actually indexed. We don't know what's in there, so we can't tell what's been removed. And only some of the X-files were ever scanned, so we can't even check to see what we have that's not in the drawer."  
  
"But, we ... have a friend who suggested that -- and this is completely a conspiracy theory, but if anyone believes it, it could explain what happened -- money was stolen from the Department of Defence to hide former employees and maybe informants that certain agencies depend on from other agencies who might be looking for them." Garcia shrugged, as if this were a barely relevant and probably ridiculous diversion. "Last night, someone got into the DoD's accounting database and pulled records for large and repeating payments between two thousand one and the present. They left behind Vanity's signature. Lisa was arrested this morning and our case... well, not ours. The Bureau's case just got transferred to the DoD."  
  
"But, there's a possible conspirator that no one's been able to find, and nobody's really been looking." Reid sipped his coffee. "We have reason to believe she's in danger."  
  
"You want me to go looking for her, because you can't," Rossi figured out, nodding at the two of them.  
  
"We have her address, but... neither of us is really in a position to go kicking down doors, right now." Reid shrugged and blinked innocently at Rossi.  
  
Rossi turned the story over in his head. "You have a friend. Both of you. The same friend. Which is someone we don't work with, or you'd have used a name. And why is this friend invited to know about an open case?"  
  
"He's a contractor who helped us from the start," Garcia responded, quickly. "He already knows about the case."  
  
"I assume this friend has a name?"  
  
"François," Reid spat out, before Garcia could say anything.  
  
Garcia picked it up at once. "Frank Arroway. He's an old friend of mine and Lisa's, and he seems to think very highly of Reid. Can't blame him, obviously."  
  
" _François_." The name dripped with disbelief as it left Rossi's mouth. "Well, let's hope your old friend Frank doesn't wind up screwing us. ... The X-files, you said? I knew the first guy they assigned to that. Everyone was sure it was a demotion, that he'd done something horrible so they packed him off to the basement with the cases nobody wanted. But, Fox took them seriously. College education and a will to take the weird ones at face value, until proven otherwise. He closed a lot of them before the weird finally got the better of him. But, I was retired, by then. I don't actually know what went down, but I heard it was a bad scene." He shook his head. "I think you would've liked him. He was good people."  
  
"We were hoping you might have some idea of who would show up in those cases. If our thief is looking for someone in there, it's going to be someone who has since disappeared under mysterious circumstances, or possibly _died_." Reid tried to look like he knew as little as possible about walking dead people who were going to need to be told they were now Frank.  
  
"Besides the original agents working those cases?" Rossi raised his eyebrows and then shook his head. "Most of the victims. Most of the perpetrators. There's some sincerely weird shit in there, guys. I can't even begin to guess what one person -- or even group of people -- would be worth this kind of trouble, after this many years."  
  
"Well, if you think of anything..." Garcia sipped her coffee, a tissue still crumpled in her other hand.  
  
"I'll give you a call." Rossi sounded amused. "And now I'm going to go violate federal law and stick my foot in a case that we're probably going to get fired over. If anyone asks, I'm investigating an anonymous tip about a murder. We think she's dead, right?"  
  
Reid squeezed his eyes shut. "Probably," he admitted.

* * *

"Eternal font of wisdom, what can I do for you, my Italian stallion?" Garcia punched the speaker button.  
  
"I'm not Sylvester Stallone, but thank you." Rossi chuckled politely. "You're right. She's dead. I brought out the locals to do the scene, because officially we know nothing." His voice raised slightly. "But, like I said, after that tip about the murder, I had to come check on things. Anything in particular I'm looking for here that would link it to one of ours?"  
  
"Clothing that wouldn't fit her," Reid answered. "Anything that looks like a second person -- particularly a shorter person -- might have been there for any length of time. Don't discount a boyfriend -- we still don't know we're looking for a woman."  
  
"Get her computer, even if you have to punch the locals and run," Garcia insisted. "I'm not expecting much, but if we can even get just her email address, I can get more information. I can get her phone records, without help, but only from phones we know are hers, and I really doubt the ones in her name are going to help us. So, check for a phone. See if there's more than one and get me the numbers from them. If there was a burner, the killer probably took it, but... We might get lucky."  
  
There was a muffled scuff, as if Rossi put his hand over the phone before he raised his voice at someone in the room with him. "Computer comes with me. If you find a phone, let me know. And check those windows -- the air conditioner's on. Why are the windows open?"  
  
Garcia took the time to fill Langly in on what was happening.  
  
"Anything else spring to mind?" Rossi asked.  
  
"You know what you're doing," Garcia replied.  
  
"What's the manner of death?" Reid leaned back against the wall behind the file cabinet.  
  
"Oh, it's definitely a murder. One bullet between the hips, in back, and another in the back of the skull. If I were a betting man, I'd say the low shot was first, to bring her head into reach," Rossi ventured, the voices of the coroner's crew almost audible behind him. "They're both close enough that there's scorching, so it's probably someone she trusted enough to turn her back on. And I'm being told she's been dead since right about the time of the other thing."  
  
"So, obviously no one could get her on the phone." Garcia sighed. "Why didn't we go looking?"  
  
"It wasn't our case long enough." Reid shrugged. "Not a repeat offender, at that point, so..."  
  
"I'm gonna finish up here, and I'll bring back anything I find," Rossi promised them. "Call me if you think of anything else."  
  
"Will do! Please come back in one piece!" Garcia's smile looked like it was sewn on.  
  
"Thanks, Rossi!" Reid called out, just before the line went dead. "Does _Frank_ have an opinion?"  
  
"You still haven't told me why that was funny."  
  
"French literature. Ask me again over lunch."  
  
"Mmm-hmm," Garcia nodded slowly, unconvinced. "Well, Monsieur François says you should meet with him to get something. That's an awful lot of 'somethings', Reid."  
  
"It's not serious. He's just bored."  
  
"Have you looked at the price on that chair, yet?"  
  
"Bored and wealthy." Reid mustered the most serious look he could manage, eyes round and honest. "I really don't think he's dangerous. You know you'll hear from me the minute I feel unsafe. You already did. I am greatly reassured that nothing is wrong, here, and I'm not in any danger. Like I said, we parted on friendly terms. I can see why you like him -- why you wanted to work with him."  
  
"You met him _once_ ," Garcia pointed out. "One time."  
  
 _Twice_ , Reid thought, but swallowed the word. "I spent almost an entire day with him, straight through. Two meals. A nap. Enough coffee to float a steamship. When have you ever known me to sleep in a room with someone I don't trust?"  
  
"I think a better question is when I have ever known you to sleep, but that's beside the point. Are you going to do this? I'm not sure I like the idea."  
  
"Neither am I, but for a completely different reason. Tell him to pick somewhere closer to him than to us. Of the two of us, I have a car." Reid slid down from the cabinet, stretching and trying to get the circulation back in his legs. "Do you know what he's offering?"  
  
"No, all he'll say is that you wanted to discuss something about a case with his friend." Garcia looked back from the screen. "What case are you talking about?"  
  
"Some of the digitised X-files have comments in them from this friend. I was curious about some of his conclusions, and he was curious about some of my publications." Reid checked to make sure his shirt was still buttoned properly. "But, if he's going to put this in my hands, I'm guessing it's something time sensitive. I'd say something about Scully, but you have everything they have. That's all digital."  
  
"Phone number." Garcia blinked. "He wouldn't want that showing up if anyone finds this conversation, and I'll say he's underestimated my security--"   
  
"Vanity was arrested in her office, this morning. All her work product is being sorted as evidence," Reid pointed out.  
  
"I know you're right, and I'm trying very hard not to think about that right now." Garcia's smile was desperately cheerful.  
  
"Lock the door behind me. If anyone comes, pretend you're not here. Call me. Call Rossi." Reid offered a small, weak smile. "But, for what it's worth? You haven't done anything and nobody's been signing your name to things. I'm pretty sure you're going to be fine. And if you get nervous _at all_ , call us. Didn't I see Prentiss in her office? Call Prentiss. She's right down the hall, and she's not going to let anything happen to you. She wouldn't have let anything happen to me, either, but I was in Mexico at the time. It was a little different."  
  
"When did you get so paranoid?" Garcia teased, looking surprised.  
  
Reid shook his head and laughed nervously. "Sorry. I don't know what that was. Something about this case bothers me. I'm ... probably unnecessarily concerned about all of us."  
  
"It's sweet. Kind of. Except the part where it makes me very nervous." Garcia chuckled and looked back at the screen to see where Langly had set the meet.  
  
"Where am I going?" Reid asked.


	4. Chapter 4

Reid took in the light crowd in the coffee shop. A small group of young punks, laughing and slapping at each other, sat in the furthest corner. A balding man in a suit read a newspaper at a small table by the wall. A middle-aged woman with curly red hair, wearing a vintage suitdress picked through her purse, at the last table before the payphone. What looked like a group out for a coffee on the way back to a nearby office occupied a larger table in the middle of the room.  
  
He stepped up to the counter and bought a large coffee, just to keep up appearances. Had he gotten here first? Had he gotten here _too late_? His eyes scanned the room again for any signal that one of these people was someone he knew. Was the balding man Frohike? No. The proportions were more wrong than could be easily adjusted.  
  
And then he spotted the glasses on the corner of the woman's table. His eyes lifted to her face. Round cheeks and red-painted bow lips had thrown him, and those eyebrows had to be fake, but... He crossed the room and slid into the other seat. "Sorry I'm late. Traffic at this hour..."  
  
The corners of Langly's mouth turned up ever so slightly. "Wasn't sure you'd know me." He made almost no attempt to disguise his voice, besides keeping it just above a whisper.  
  
"I almost didn't." Reid cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows.  
  
" _Now_ do you believe I had to dress up like a hooker?" Langly teased, taking a small box out of his purse and sliding it across the table. "God, I love the future. I walk into a middle-of-the-road coffee shop like this, and nobody even blinks." He paused. "I still want to go back home and put on pants. It's really unnerving."  
  
"For what it's worth, you look good." Reid slid the package into a pocket. "Not that you don't usually look good, but I mean..."  
  
"I don't look like a fucking clown?" Langly drawled.  
  
"That too, but more than that. You don't look more nervous than a woman alone in an unfamiliar neighbourhood. And it's not a bad look on you." Reid wondered if he was still digging the hole he had a terrible sense had just gaped open under him.  
  
"Don't get used to it. It's convenient, but it's not me. I'm not coming with you to the company Christmas party dressed like this, if that's what you're not asking."  
  
"It's not," Reid assured him. "What I'm not asking is what I'm holding and why it was so important."  
  
"It's a phone that only phones home," Langly explained. "I have another one. The thing you need to know is that it needs internet access. Inside DC, that's not going to be a problem. You won't be out of range of a public signal for more than a couple of blocks in the entire city. Parks. Parks are rough. When you leave town, it might only work in your hotel, but you can leave a message, if you're offline, and it'll send as soon as it can get a connection."  
  
"And... what's wrong with just a burner phone or a payphone like normal people concerned about the confidentiality of their calls?" Reid looked unconvinced.  
  
"You know the answer to that. You've found people like that." Langly kept a sweet smile on his face, as if they were having a chat about a romantic excursion. "There's no GPS in this, _at all_. The hardware re-identifies itself as a new device every time it connects to a network. I built this to keep us both safe. Also, you've got two numbers in there and the other one will ring Byers, because he's mooning over some article you published last year." He paused turning the coffee cup on the table in front of him. "I realised it was stupid to just show up and expect you to put up with me. I really just wanted a way to ask, before I dragged my ass across the state again."  
  
Reid reached out and took Langly's hand. "Thank you. I appreciate you lessening the chaos inherent in this situation."  
  
"So, since you're here... Vanity? Really?" Langly twined his fingers with Reid's. "I guess Vanity's finally got a name and a pronoun."  
  
"Really. Vanity. I read the documentation for the warrant, and the person who's been arrested is definitely Vanity, as established almost twenty years ago." Reid shook his head. "I don't know her, but this looks... G-- Her Majesty says the times are wrong, that it's much too slow."  
  
"Garcia. You can say it. I looked up your team." This time Langly's smile was real, if a bit thin. "I agree with her. I've been haunting the case file as it comes together. It looks like Vanity, but it also looks like someone slowed down one of Vanity's classic exploits by about a third. I don't think this is just someone posing as Vanity because it's the way they learned to do things--"  
  
"It's someone posing as Vanity to get her caught," Reid finished the thought. "It's a vendetta against _Vanity_ , not another target. Did you tell Garcia?"  
  
"She's looking into the safe end of that, now. I left Byers with her. Frohike's still doing some video processing, because I want to know if any of the people involved in making that arrest are people we know." The grim twist of Langly's lips looked out of place under all the lipstick. "Yeah, surprise, I can get to that video too."  
  
"I should be a lot more upset by this, and when this case is over, I will be, but right now? Good. We need all the eyes we can get." Reid's fingers tightened. "I wish I could stay, but ... Rossi's coming back with more evidence for us to go through. And Garcia's afraid to be alone, right now. I can't blame her."  
  
"Not after what happened this morning," Langly agreed, moving to stand without letting go of Reid's hand.  
  
Reid followed him up. "And if anyone asks, you're Frank." He coughed. "Rossi asked. We panicked. I said François, because of the chair. Garcia anglicised the whole name..."  
  
Langly's lips tightened as he tried not to laugh hysterically and draw attention to them. "You're kidding me. Well, I'll get her to spell it for me, and then I'll make it real." He huffed and shook his head. " _Frank_. Better than 'Dick', I guess."  
  
"I'm not delivering the punchline to that one." Reid's eyebrows arced up.  
  
"Lame." Langly closed the space between them and pressed his red lips against Reid's, adding a quick peck on the cheek before he pulled back. "Go get your evidence. I'll be back at my desk before you are."  
  
"Call me, tomorrow? I'd like to... We should... I'll pay for dinner, this time. And I'll come get you from wherever you tell me, so you don't have to walk as far."  
  
"No promises about dinner, but I'll call you." Langly leaned in for another quick kiss and then turned and headed for the bathrooms.  
  
Reid took the cue, grabbed his coffee, and left, with no mind to the lipstick marks on his face, until he spotted them in the rearview mirror. There had to be napkins in the glovebox. He couldn't go back to Garcia looking like this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to I_Kill_Zombies for making me actually think through the phone in this chapter. Anything that is still wrong with this implementation is on me.


	5. Chapter 5

  
"Sorry! Sorry!" Reid slipped past Rossi, through the barely opened door of Garcia's office. "Traffic's a mess."  
  
Rossi shut the door and waited for Reid to settle in, on top of the same file cabinet he'd occupied, before. "So, the good news is, we've got DNA, and _so far_ the blood type doesn't match the victim or Lisa Ortiz. It's going to take days to get it sequenced, but as of right now, I can tell you that Lisa Ortiz _most likely_ did not commit that murder. That doesn't get her out from under the accusation that she _paid for it_ , though."  
  
"And Conspiracy really doesn't end better than Murder I," Reid remarked, the flush of exertion and panic fading from his face. He caught Rossi squinting at him.  
  
"You've got something on your face." Rossi pointed to a spot on his cheek.  
  
Reid's eyes widened and he scrubbed at his face with the sleeve of his jacket, trying to keep his breathing steady, trying to give no sign that this was something he should have expected. "What is it? Is it off?"  
  
Garcia shrugged. "Can't tell. Looked like you smacked your cheek on something. A little red spot."  
  
"Red?" Reid's nose crinkled in faux confusion and he shook his head, dismissively. "So, we have someone who's trying to set up Lisa for a hostage situation and break-in, a DoD security breach, and a murder. That's a wide range of choices that have very little in common, on the surface."  
  
"I have no indication that Lisa knew Alondra Metcalfe. There's nothing in Alondra's phone records or her email. I'm... I don't want to get too close to Lisa's, but apparently our friend has no reservations about that, and he hasn't turned up anything that links them." Garcia shook her head and turned back to the screen. "If I was going to learn these things about Lisa, I would really rather them have come up over coffee, and not in a victim profile."  
  
"Living victim," Reid reminded her.  
  
"Somehow that just makes it worse. Here we are digging through her life trying to prove she didn't do anything horrible, but ... you know the kinds of things we find. She's not going to be thrilled. I mean, here's the name of her dead husband: James Belmont."  
  
"Belmont?" Rossi stepped closer to look over Garcia's shoulder. "Like the guy who stepped in front of the bus in Las Vegas, and the conspiracists all blamed the CIA? That was big news, in some circles, for years."  
  
Garcia tipped her head, running another search. "Exactly that Belmont, in fact. That James Belmont. Survived by one brother, Kimball, called 'Kimmy'. And it... doesn't look like Lisa stayed in touch with Kimmy, either. ... Or that Alondra knew him. I was hoping it would be something simple. Dead husband's vindictive brother, and we all sleep well, tonight."  
  
"Has she worked on anything that would've inspired this, recently? What's her name shown up on?" Reid asked, wondering if that last cup of coffee had been a good idea.  
  
"Her cases are long. She hasn't worked something that's ended in an arrest -- that's ended at all -- in a few years. It looks like she was working on corporate and political money laundering, which, really, is right up her alley. But, those cases take forever to put together. It doesn't look like she's pissed anyone off in a long time. Or, not that way, anyway."  
  
"Something set this off." Reid rocked back, leaning against the wall, his feet up on the edge of the cabinet. "People hold grudges for twenty years, sure, but there has to have been some kind of trigger. Why is someone coming after her _now_? It's one of her students, we think, so the initial offence was probably something about that. Maybe it's abandonment? She just disappeared, right?"  
  
Garcia nodded. "There was no news, when she went. One day she was there, and the next she was gone. That wasn't unusual, but that time she didn't come back. Turns out she actually turned before that time. The last time she vanished was when _I_ vanished. Everyone thinks we went out _together_. Except that's not what happened. They caught her first, and I was the sacrifice."  
  
"You took the fall instead of her acolytes. I mean, that really makes _you_ the perfect choice, here." Reid laughed nervously. "Except that none of us would be working on this if you hadn't brought us in."  
  
"So, who else did she sacrifice? Was there anyone else?" Rossi asked, digging a stepstool out from between two cabinets and unfolding it for a seat.  
  
"I don't know." Garcia shook her head. "None of us knew who she was working with. She was so solid, I'm willing to bet it was just me. And I know she thought I was even younger than I was. She thought I'd just get my hands slapped and walk away. Instead she got me the best job on the planet, so, I mean, I'm... not mad. I could have been, once, but not any more. I love you guys."  
  
"So, why Alondra?" Rossi changed the subject. "Of everyone working in that building, what makes Alondra special?"  
  
"She had access to the room with the X-files." Garcia started typing again, and windows sprung open in her wake. "She's not the only one, but she's the only young and single person. I don't see much contact with any family members, either. She's the perfect victim -- lonely and with no one to miss her.The other four archivists working that room are much older and a quick look says they're solidly middle-class and married. Three of them have children almost her age."  
  
"I'm assuming you didn't turn up any unusual deposits?" Reid pressed his palms against his eyes.  
  
"Bank records are stunningly boring. It's like she didn't have a life at all." Garcia shook her head. "Just bills and groceries and her direct deposit. A small savings account with consistent small monthly deposits."  
  
"How tight was she living?" Rossi asked suddenly, leaning forward. "Maybe we're not looking for money, but for _gifts_."  
  
"I'm doing better, but not by a whole lot," Garcia said, after a moment, "but I also have room to go out for dinner or drinks, which she's not doing. So... that's pretty tight."  
  
"Even I do dinner out," Reid muttered.  
  
"That's because you're apparently incapable of cooking anything more exciting than canned soup," Rossi teased, looking entirely too amused.  
  
Reid resisted the urge to mention he'd finally opened the olive oil. "Does she have a car?"  
  
"There's no car payments, but maybe she bought something used..." Garcia's fingers clattered across the keys. "Oh. Oh, well, that's... definitely a motive. That is a brand new Beemer that came into her possession... three months ago, supposedly as an inheritance, but who buys a car and drops dead a month later? Seriously, it's this year's model."  
  
"Are the two of you going to be okay, if I go grade papers?" Reid asked, suddenly, realising how late it had probably gotten in that windowless room. "I'm... not even supposed to be in the building and 'sorry I'm on a case' is not going to get me an extension, it's going to get me _fired_."  
  
"Go, go!" Garcia fluttered a hand at him. "I'll call you if we turn up anything interesting."  
  
"I promise to return, bearing coffee, tomorrow afternoon." Reid spilled himself off the cabinet and let himself out the door before he'd finished finding his legs.  
  
"Is it just me, or is something wrong with him, lately?" Rossi studied the door intently, as if Reid might reappear.  
  
"He's just... very absorbed in this teaching thing. You know how he gets," Garcia lied far more smoothly than she could ever credit herself with being. Reid had very definitely been weird for a few weeks, and she was pretty sure why. When he was ready to talk about it, he would.  
  
"He just ran out of here in the middle of victimology. Any other day, you'd have to pry him away with a crowbar and a pint of coffee." Rossi shook his head and looked back at what Garcia had pulled up. "Maybe it's a good thing he's got the time off. Give him something else to think about."  
  
"Oh, he's definitely got that," Garcia murmured.


	6. Chapter 6

Reid woke up in his desk chair, the first thought that he hadn't finished the grading... but that wasn't right. He'd already put the papers back in his bag. And then he'd sat down to... Oh.  
  
Langly's phone blinked at him from the middle of the clear space in front of him on the desk. He'd sat back down to get a good look at it, with the light. To figure out how it worked -- or at least how he was supposed to use it. The part about leaving messages that would send later had sounded appealing, and he thought back to the notebook currently jammed down the back of the couch, under the cushions. He'd fallen asleep thinking about reading one of those pages and letting it send at some random point during the day. He'd fallen asleep thinking about how strangely good it had felt to wake up with Langly sprawled across him.  
  
He checked the time -- an hour. just a nap. -- and decided to try to sleep more in a chair better designed for it. Not that he was much inclined to sleep, but he could already tell that he hadn't slept well. Desk chairs were not meant to be slept in, and that position had done something horrible to his back.  
  
Somewhere amid kicking his trousers off and pouring himself into the recliner, Reid realised he hadn't figured out why the phone had started blinking. Fortunately, at some point in his distraction, he'd picked it up, so he took a closer look as he tried to arrange the blanket with the other hand. A message? ... And a messages button. Convenient.  
  
"Delayed message test." Langly's voice offered, as if some excuse were needed. "I know it's too late to call you, even if it is technically tomorrow, but I just want to make sure this stupid thing works now that half of it is no longer in my hands. I have no idea when you're going to get this, but ... when you hear it, know I'm thinking of you. I'll try to call at a more reasonable hour."  
  
Reid realised he was smiling as it sunk in that his face hurt from it. A huge smile, a giddy smile, a smile that probably looked even worse than it felt. He tried to pull his face back into some configuration that didn't feel like a sprain waiting to happen and pushed the message button again.  
  
Curling up around the warmth in his chest, Reid decided he'd pass a message back. Not a call. Not at this hour. Just a message. He squinted at the buttons, trying to remember the scribbled but thorough note that had accompanied the device. 'Delay', that was it. It would send when he connected to a _different_ network.  
  
"Got your message." He raised his voice just enough to be sure the phone would pick it up. "I'm half-asleep, but I just wanted you to know you'd been heard. I like hearing your voice. I'm not really good at this, so I'm just going to stop talking before I say something stupid, but I'm thinking of you, too."  
  
He fell asleep with the phone in his hand.

* * *

The next message came while he was teaching, and Reid felt the subtle vibration in his pocket. He didn't get a chance to check it until he was halfway to the parking lot, a cup of cheap vending machine coffee in his other hand.  
  
"Going to bed thinking of me, huh? There better be one less condom under your couch."  
  
Reid choked on his coffee, catching half the mouthful in the cup that was still at his lips, the rest dribbling off his chin to meet the floor as he leaned forward so it wouldn't hit his shirt. A few coughs and he remembered how to breathe and not to breathe _coffee_.  
  
"You all right?" someone asked.  
  
"Great." Reid croaked. "I just can't walk and drink coffee at the same time."  
  
The phone had disappeared into his sleeve, to be deposited into his pocket in passing. He made a note not to drink anything while checking his messages on that phone.  
  
He left another message for Langly just before he called Garcia to ask about the case. "Oh, it's going to be like that, is it? It is _on_."  
  
He finished the thought on the highway, letting his mouth run on without intervention, as he left another message, a much longer message, rhapsodising about a kiss they hadn't yet shared.  
  
The reply came just before he lost public signal on the way into the office, and he listened to it on the elevator, smiling smugly in the empty car as he brought a tray of coffee up, as promised. "I hate you. Dinner. Tonight. Eight. You're buying." The rest of the message was instructions.

* * *

Reid knocked on the door of Garcia's office, the phone once again tucked away. He led with the coffee when JJ opened the door. "I pay my debts," he said, raising the tray with a small smile.  
  
"She knows," Garcia said, without turning around.  
  
Reid offered the tray to JJ. "Then take a coffee and tell me what's going on. I was expecting Rossi, but it seemed like a shame to only get three cups when a carrier holds four..."  
  
JJ laughed soundlessly through the first word she tried, but read the sides of the cups until she identified the one that didn't obviously belong to someone else and took it. "I think she's been here all night."  
  
"Maybe." Garcia shook out her hands and held one out for a coffee, which Reid supplied. "It's not like I didn't sleep. I napped. Frank and Fitz have been passing me back and forth. Fitz sounds adorable, and when I am not up to my eyeballs saving someone's life, I might take a closer look."  
  
Reid attempted to fit the name onto something, and came up with Byers after a few blinks. 'Fitzgerald'. Right. "So, what do we know that we didn't know yesterday?"  
  
"I traced the car back to a buyer using a black card -- better? It's one of ours. Not... ours, ours, but I poked it and got a nasty phone call out of the CIA."  
  
"Which brings us back to the Belmonts," Reid recalled.  
  
"And speaking of the Belmonts, there's still nothing there. Kimmy's got a company that does emergency data retrieval and restoration on a large scale -- for those times when you short out an entire datacenter. Just got married to a beautiful woman, a few months ago. They're not involved in any legal disputes, which is really impressive given what he does for a living. She's an employee -- head of research and development. No kids. No holidays abroad. He's the last Belmont standing, so if it's about them, it's about him. And he's honestly not that interesting. Apparently, a pretty good shot, though. And our friends know him, too, but not recently. For... obvious reasons.  
  
"Still, the nasty phone call suggested that there shouldn't have been a _single_ car purchased with that card. Or at least not in this country." Garcia tipped her head back and forth and took a sip of the coffee. "That means we now have the CIA breathing down somebody's neck. Assuming they can figure it out faster than we can."  
  
"No reason to assume that, right?" JJ took the seat Rossi had been using the day before.  
  
"Good point. We have a lot more information than they do, right now." Reid smiled wickedly as he hoisted himself back onto the file cabinet he'd claimed for himself. "And if they go in the front way, it's going to distract the DoD investigators from us. In theory. I mean, we're just working a murder case, here, right? It's not our fault that's related to a security breach we know nothing about!"  
  
"It makes me very nervous when you get like this." JJ pointed a finger at Reid. "But, you're probably right."  
  
"Okay, so, Alondra was probably murdered by someone in possession of a CIA black card. And yet? The card was used improperly -- not just for something that shouldn't have been bought, but in a way that should have aroused immediate suspicions if anyone was actually reviewing those purchases. Which kind of implies that it's actually being held by someone who shouldn't have the card." Reid huffed in frustration. "I wish we knew more about the acolytes. I wish we knew _anything_ about the acolytes. Because I have a terrible idea and absolutely nothing to back it up."  
  
"You're thinking the trigger was that whoever this is was out of the country until now, aren't you?" JJ sipped her coffee and Reid nodded. "That they came back and finally had the _means_ to pursue the person who betrayed them."  
  
"I feel like that card isn't supposed to be active, and that's why no one noticed it. We're dealing with someone who walked into the DoD and _slowed down_ their attack to make sure they'd be caught. Garcia? How hard would it be for someone with the skills we're talking about to re-activate an old card? These things don't have expiration dates, as I recall..."  
  
"Let's ask one of the few people I think could actually do it." Garcia's fingers clattered on the keys. "And Frank says he wouldn't try it, but he wouldn't have put it past Kimmy Belmont, back in the day. Thing is, there's no reason Kimmy would have a card, and Frank says if he did have one, he'd have been arrested six times over because he'd be unable to resist trying to max it out."  
  
"Okay, but assuming his brother, James, _was_ killed by the CIA, couldn't that have put Kimmy in contact with a card?" JJ asked. "What if he reactivated it for someone else?"  
  
"Turns out Kimmy wasn't there. Didn't even go to his brother's funeral, as far as anyone can tell. I guess they weren't that close." Garcia shrugged.  
  
"Okay, out of left field, what are the chances we're dealing with an acolyte who got picked up by the CIA? The trigger could be as simple as getting _fired_. Or blowing a case. The blame may be on Vanity for not teaching them better." Reid brought his cup to his lips, surprised to discover he'd already emptied it.  
  
Garcia's phone rang. "Office of Intellectual Superiority! You're on speaker!"  
  
"It was her _girlfriend_ ," Rossi said, with no introduction. "Alondra had a girlfriend. The neighbours didn't know, potentially because the only night she was there was the night of the murder, but I flashed her picture around some local restaurants, and sure enough, there's another woman involved. About the height of our thief. And to judge by the kissing and hand-holding over the table, the two were very definitely involved."  
  
"She was murdered by her own girlfriend? Is it bad that I hope they were at least broken up when that happened? I just can't... How long have I been doing this job? I still can't wrap my head around how you can be in a supposedly loving relationship with someone and... _kill them_." Garcia shuddered. "And yet? Domestic violence statistics say it's still the most common way women get killed."  
  
"Does the girlfriend have a name?" JJ asked, leaning to the side to give Reid a clear shot at the bin behind her.  
  
"She's using the black card to pay for their dinners. It doesn't require a signature, just a pin." Rossi paused and a voice in the background could be heard, but not distinguished. "Cissy, apparently. One of the waiters remembers them calling each other Cissy and Lonnie."  
  
"Tell me you're getting a sketch artist," JJ said. "We still don't know what Cissy looks like."  
  
"Of course. It'll be a few hours. I can't call ours, without that biting us on the ass, later, and there's a bit of a backlog with the locals. But, soon enough we'll know." Rossi paused. "And that's the lead detective. I gotta go."  
  
"There are so many things that could be short for," Reid pointed out. "Assuming she even has an ID, locally... We can't just run every woman in the country between four foot six and five foot two and hope for a hit."  
  
"So we start local and see what pops." Garcia managed to sound cheerful as she started typing. "Okay. So. There are a lot of things Cissy might be short for, and it is literally none of these. So, either it's a completely unrelated nickname or she's not from around here."  
  
"Still leaning on that overseas operative theory, Reid?" JJ put her half-empty coffee aside in the nearest space she could find between other things.  
  
"It almost fits, but it bothers me. Everything bothers me. We're missing a piece, somewhere, and I have no idea what it is."  
  
"It's like panning for gold," Garcia decided. "You just keep digging and shaking it down until you get something good."  
  
"Too much coffee, not enough breakfast," Reid said, suddenly, bouncing down from the top of the cabinet. "We're not going to have anything to work with for a couple of hours, right? I'm going to see if I can take care of a few things. Do you want me to bring back sandwiches?"  
  
"I will eat absolutely anything as long as it's not breakfast food," Garcia announced, the pattern of her typing suggesting a conversation.  
  
"You know what I'll eat, Spence." JJ shrugged and reached for her wallet.  
  
"Don't worry about it. Lunch is on me, for running out on the two of you. I just... I built my whole week around _teaching_ , and there's only so many things I can move before people get suspicious." Reid ducked out before he got any further into that conversation. A few hours now that he might not have later, if things continued to unfold at this staggered pace. He was sure Garcia would figure it out in a few minutes, but he had to believe she wouldn't say anything to JJ or Rossi. He was going to be in enough trouble without the help, once it came out he'd been working this case.  
  
As he left the building, he made a call.


	7. Chapter 7

This time, Langly showed up as a lantern-jawed hipster with dark hair and genuinely ridiculous sunglasses. He laughed, as he got into the car. "Pretty sure this thing is older than I am," he teased, knocking on the roof.  
  
"Also like you, it works well and stands as proof of my impeccable taste," Reid retorted, pulling back into traffic.  
  
"Just so you know, this is a very bad idea," Langly pointed out. "But, I'm ... This was how things used to be, before. We'd do crazy shit for our pet feds, they'd... sometimes actually let us print some of it. And I'd actually go outside a couple times a week, sometimes more, if we were chasing something. And I'm not going to stop trying to keep my head down, but I've reached a point where I really have to ask myself if survival is worth it, with no living attached. I'd rather not die of it, but I just want to be a normal fucking person again. And you're a great excuse."  
  
"To borrow a line from a friend, I am an absolute delight." A tiny smile crossed Reid's face. "Please don't die, Langly. I'm... You can't imagine how serious I am about that. I know that any attempt to see you is probably putting you in danger, and I really should not have encouraged this--"  
  
"It's the broad daylight part," Langly replied. "I would be much more comfortable with this at night, even if I get why you moved it up. The cameras don't work as well, in the dark, because most people won't pay for the hardware that will do the job at night. Even then, the city's only got those aimed at government buildings and license plates. I can dodge most of them, but I'm _going_ to cross them coming up to your place. I'd rather they not get a good look."  
  
"I'm completely sure facial recognition isn't going to figure you out," Reid assured him.  
  
"I don't really get much shorter and nose putty really only works when you don't have a ski jump on the front of your face," Langly muttered, knees and ankles pressed together as he sat as stiffly as possible without quite working himself out of the slump that lowered his shoulders. "Look, can we just talk about the case until we get back to your place? I can't think about this while I'm doing it."  
  
"Tell me about Kimmy Belmont," Reid suggested with a shrug. "He keeps coming up."  
  
Langly laughed bitterly, rocking forward to rest his head on the dash. "You just cut right to it, don't you?"  
  
"I'm... what?" Reid blinked in confusion, eyes flicking from the road to Langly for just long enough to register the lack of a visible facial expression in that position.  
  
"Kimmy Belmont. Five times. Three minutes each." Langly cleared his throat and laughed nervously.  
  
It was all of Reid's self-control not to reflexively slam on the brakes. " _Three minutes_ ," he scoffed. "You're worth at _least_ ten."  
  
Langly laughed as if that were actually funny, but still didn't sit up. "You're an asshole. But, I like it on you. And I guess I liked it on Kimmy, too. But, he was way more obnoxious. God, what an absolute prick. Always refused to help me unless I admitted he was the best of the best, first. Then I found something better to trade. Three minutes against the nearest wall was a lot more fun and a lot less rough on my pride. He really _wasn't_ the best of the best. I met her, once, before she... I think died is the appropriate word. He was just ... better than me at some things. I was better than him at the rest. We could've done some serious damage, if he'd ever gotten the hell over himself."  
  
"I'm going to pass on the obvious punchline about what you're good at," Reid decided. "You know he got married a few months ago?"  
  
"Can't say I kept in touch, but Garcia told me. She was hoping I knew his wife, too, but I've never heard of her, which is a real shame. I looked her up, and she's ... let's just say Kimmy's got a type." Langly laughed again.  
  
"Hackers of questionable virtue?" Reid teased, watching Langly in the corner of his eye.  
  
"Tall, blond hackers," Langly retorted, finally sitting up to shoot a disgruntled look at Reid. "My virtue is not questionable, and as soon as we get through that door, I'm going to show you exactly how obvious and unquestionable it is. _Hers_ , I wouldn't know about."  
  
"So, we keep circling around Kimmy as a secondary target. He doesn't quite fit because he's so public. Why wouldn't he have been hit, already?"  
  
"I'd say it's because his security's too good, but I really don't know about his physical security. His data security is at least as good as mine, possibly better, because he married someone else in the field, and you always want someone checking for holes. Explain your network security to a rubber duck is great and all, but explain your network security to another hacker is better every time." Langly shoved his fingers under the sunglasses to rub his eye. "And that's something else. Vanity's a bit miner. Data extraction only. Kimmy's full demolitions, if you piss him off. We're not talking denial of service, we're talking rm dash rf _slash_."  
  
"I'm going to nod along and pretend I know what you're talking about. I was with you up to 'demolitions'."  
  
"Denial of service usually hammers a server until it can't handle legitimate requests. If Kimmy wants to take out a server, he usually goes more permanent, if he can do it. Gets in, takes the highest level of control available, and deletes everything the system isn't currently using. It won't destroy _everything_ , but it'll usually make the server unbootable. If he shuts it down on the way out -- or it crashes because of the deletions -- it's not coming back up. It's going to have to be restored from the last backup, assuming he didn't find those, too."  
  
"Why is this possible? That sounds like the opposite of good security!" Reid argued, trying to wrap his mind around the idea.  
  
"It's not usually possible. There's a whole lot of permissions and failsafes in place to make sure you don't do that. And in any properly designed system, it's a lot harder than it sounds. I could rattle off exactly how it works, and under what circumstances, but you don't even own a computer, so I don't think that's really going to help. But, assuming you can get in that far, it's pretty effective for at least seriously delaying whoever you're fucking with, even if it doesn't take the system out completely." Langly snorted. "He was always good at wrecking things."  
  
Reid cleared his throat. "Obvious punchline's yours, if you want it."  
  
"I hate you."  
  
"No, you don't."  
  
"Did you pick up lunch?" Langly asked, after a few moments' silence.  
  
"For you, me, and what I have to bring back to the office," Reid confirmed. "It's how I got out of there. We won't have anything else to do, until Rossi sends back the compos--" He blinked and pulled his phone out of his pocket, checking to make sure he held the right one, before he tapped a contact, hit speaker, and almost tossed it into Langly's lap, before realising that tossing the phone onto the seat next to him wasn't going to work this time.  
  
Langly plucked the phone out of his hands with a curious look, but just held it.  
  
"Oracle of Divine Wisdom!" Garcia chirped. "Are you calling about my sandwich?"  
  
"Actually, I'm calling so you can text me Kimmy Belmont's number. Have you talked to him yet?" Reid asked.  
  
"No reason to bother him. He doesn't look like he's actually involved. Things are just... near him, just like they're near me and our friend."  
  
"I have a few questions I want to ask him. Just some general background, to get a better feel for the people involved."  
  
"I promise to listen with my mouth full, when you return. You should have the number in just a sec."  
  
"Thanks, Garcia. Your divine wisdom is appreciated." Reid hung up the phone in Langly's hand. "Thanks. Sorry about that, I usually just toss it on the seat, if I'm driving, but ... you're sitting there."  
  
"Why are you calling Kimmy?"  
  
"You never met Vanity. Are you _sure_ he didn't?" Reid started looking for a parking space. "Because an awful lot of people who knew each other fifteen or twenty years ago are suddenly coming up -- you, Garcia, Vanity, Kimmy -- and we got to Kimmy by way of his brother, who was _married_ to her."  
  
"Jimmy." Langly nodded. "I was there when he died. And I know for a _fact_ that was the CIA, because I got hit with the exact same thing he did, by the exact same CIA asshole, but nobody told _me_ to step in front of a bus. Instead, I almost committed a murder. And you know how I am about corpses. You should've seen what he did to Scully. That was freaky and gross. My memory of that entire series of events is a little hazy, but I'm pretty sure I owe Byers my life. Which was _instantly_ paid off because it's _entirely_ his fault I was in that situation in the first place. Him and his stupid twenty years of being a lovesick idiot."  
  
"I'm going to ask you an extremely strange question." Reid parked the car and turned to look at Langly. "Who was the CIA agent and what happened to his _wallet_?"  
  
"Timothy Landau, that prick. He went to prison. I don't know what happened to his wallet. I never really thought about it." Langly blinked, his face suddenly blank. "You think that's where the card came from."  
  
"I think there's a really good chance that someone who was there for that is responsible for this. All of you were there, right?"  
  
"I never met Vanity, that I know of, and I ... never met Garcia, that I know of. I can't actually swear how many of us were there except that Kimmy wasn't, so I'm not sure what good calling him's going to do."  
  
"By virtue of being someone else, he knows things you and Garcia don't about what went on back then. I'm hoping he might have known Vanity well enough to be able to name an acolyte or three." Reid grabbed the deli bag out of the back of the car before he opened the door.  
  
"Nobody knows who they are except Vanity." Langly shrugged and slammed the car door behind himself. "I'm really pretty sure of that. Vanity appeared. Shit happened. Vanity disappeared. But, there was no way those jobs were happening without extra hands, and while they were implied, they were never credited."  
  
"Can't hurt to ask. We've got almost nothing. Besides, in case he is a target, someone should probably suggest he pick up the security for a little while." Reid shoved the bag of sandwiches into Langly's hands and fished for his keys.  
  
On the stairs, amid the rustle of plastic, Langly asked, "How the hell many people are you feeding?"  
  
"Five, I think. Maybe only four. If it's suddenly six, number six is out of luck." Reid checked the hall in both directions as he reached for his keys -- no doors opening, no unexpected sounds.  
  
He managed a split second of relief as they both made it in the door without any of the neighbours noticing, and then Langly was pressing him back against the door, crowding in for a kiss. Reid grabbed Langly with both hands and wrenched him to the side, shaking his head. One hand locked the door as his eyes took in the room, and then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, one hand still holding Langly's arm, as he listened. He'd been teaching that morning, so his gun was still in the safe, but there was a limit to how long most people could be still. If anything moved, they were still close enough to the door to get out. Seconds ticked by, but the only sound was Langly shifting the bag of sandwiches into his other hand.  
  
"Sorry, I just..." Reid shook his head and let go of Langly's arm. "Never here, but enough members of my team have had problems at home, and I've lived here forever. If any of us can be found, it's me. No one's ever bothered, th... No, that's not quite true. No one's ever laid in wait for _me_ , here. Someone ... It doesn't matter. It's over, now. But, I can't walk in like nothing's going to happen, just because I live here."  
  
"Credit for brains," Langly admitted. "I wasn't thinking with mine."  
  
"A little too virtuous for your own good," Reid teased, leaning in to offer the kiss he'd turned down just moments before. "Possibly also too virile."  
  
"I'm framing that and hanging it on my wall," Langly murmured against Reid's lips, as he backed up into a bookcase and pulled Reid with him, kissing like he thought he might drown without sharing breath. "First time anyone's put me and 'virile' in a sentence that wasn't supposed to be a joke."  
  
"Obviously people who have never had the opportunity to writhe against your crotch," Reid joked, drawing back slowly, his lip slipping from between Langly's teeth. "I should probably call Kimmy, before we get too distracted. Work first, and then maybe something a little more enjoyable."  
  
"A little?" Langly scoffed, digging through the bag of sandwiches as he headed for the couch, trying not to think about how awkward this was going to be.  
  
"A great deal more enjoyable than work, although I do actually like my job." Making his way around the coffee table, to put on coffee, Reid checked for the text from Garcia. Good. The number had come through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't edited this chapter, because I'm so tired my eyes won't both focus at the same time. I'll come back to it when I can see.


	8. Chapter 8

Langly listened, trying to distract himself with a sandwich bigger than his forearm, now that he'd put his own face back on, as Reid made the call. Really, he didn't think this was going to even work. Kimmy talking to a fed? That'd be the day.  
  
"May I speak to Mr Belmont, please?" Reid picked up the pencil from the pad on the coffee table. "I'm Special Agent Spencer Reid, with the FBI, and it's an urgent matter potentially concerning his safety. ... Yes, thank you, I'll hold."  
  
He didn't put the phone on speaker, because that would change the sound of the call, but he did turn the volume up loud enough that Langly might be able to hear it. The idea was that Langly might be able to suggest things to ask or mention.  
  
"Agent Reid, how can I help you?"  
  
Even with the voice tinny and muffled, Langly looked like he might throw up. He pushed the sandwich away and tried to concentrate on the conversation.  
  
"I'm hoping that's a two-way street. We may be able to help you, as well. Your name came up in connection with an investigation, and we have concerns you may be targeted by the person we're tracking." Reid opened with the danger, hoping it might encourage Kimmy to talk. "The problem is, we haven't identified the person, only their trail, and we think you may be able to help us put the pieces together."  
  
"You want me to turn on someone who may once have been a friend, because you're fishing for hackers." Kimmy's voice hardened, and Langly grabbed the phone from Reid.  
  
"Just fucking talk to the man, Kimmy!"  
  
The sharp breath on the other end of the phone was inaudible to Reid, but Langly got it right in the ear.  
  
"Do I know you?" There was the edge of curiosity Langly had been hoping for.  
  
"In the biblical sense," Langly ground out. "It's Ringo."  
  
"No, that's impossible," Kimmy scoffed. "Nice try, but Ringo's been dead for years."  
  
"You sure about that? You didn't come to my funeral, you prick. You could've checked. Yves was there, little Jimmy, Fed One and Fed Two... But, no Kimmy Belmont, who I guess just doesn't do funerals." The acid in Langly's voice was more than a decade distilled from the moment it had formed. "Ask me whatever you want, Kimmy, but I'm not telling you you're the best."  
  
A small amused noise came over the line. "Nineteen ninety-nine. You caught me on the range to ask for my help for someone's father. There was a woman at the end. What did you say to her?"  
  
"I said she looked better with a beard. Because she fucking did. And then you grabbed my ass in front of everyone." Langly paused and groaned. "I better not find out Yves is part of this."  
  
" _Behind_ everyone," Kimmy corrected, as if it made the slightest difference to Langly. "And what did you say to me in that hotel hallway, next to the ice machine?"  
  
"Before or after you wiped your hand on my shirt? I liked that shirt. The grease stain never came out." Langly huffed, not really wanting to get into this, of all things. "Because before I'm pretty sure it was the same thing I always said to you -- 'hurry up'. And after was probably 'what the hell did you just wipe on my shirt?' But, I don't actually remember, because I had other things on my mind, like the job I wasn't sticking my foot in without another pair of hands. Look, you want something nobody else is going to know? How about the time I stood up and farted?"  
  
"Assuming that I accept you're really you, which I'll almost give you after that last one, except for the part where you would never admit any such thing, how is it you're working for the feds again, Ringo? Did they catch you doing something stupid because you didn't have the very best leading your charge? Or have they just had you on ice all this time?" Kimmy still managed to sound just as arrogant as he had always been.  
  
"I came out because the Black Queen asked me to save your brother's wife," Langly snapped, rearranging parts of the story for the best impact.  
  
There was a long pause. "You know Lisa?"  
  
"No, I don't know _Lisa_ , but I do know Vanity." Langly waited.  
  
"What does Vanity have to do with any of this? She's been missing for almost as long as you."  
  
"Oh my god, Kimmy. Are you serious? He was your brother and you didn't even _know_?" Langly whipped his glasses off, threw them at the wall, and pressed the heel of his hand against the bridge of his nose.  
  
"Jimmy wasn't Vanity..." Kimmy sounded offended at the idea.  
  
"No, you idiot, he married her. Lisa was, and still is, Vanity, and she's been arrested by the Department of Defence, which I seem to remember being one of your specialities, and we're both going to pretend I didn't say that out loud. The only thing is, she didn't do it, this time, because this time it involved fucking airshaft parkour, a dead body, and thirty-something pounds of explosives." Langly realised he couldn't see and went to push his glasses up. Right. He shot Reid a plaintive look. "I'm not looking for _our_ friends. I'm looking for _hers_. But, if you didn't even know who she was..."  
  
"Jimmy and I weren't that close. I stayed away from his wife, even if she was hot. Even after he died. She didn't want to see me, because I look too much like him, and I didn't really know her well enough to get offended." Kimmy hummed his way into an inquisitive noise. "Wait, wait. Your fed said this was something about my safety. Was that just some kind of line of federal bullshit, or do you know something?"  
  
"You and Jimmy keep coming up. Mostly Jimmy, but... You know how it is. We were all running in the same circles, back then. So, when we get a blip that points back toward the CIA possibly by way of that asshole Timmy Landau... Don't get fucking shot, Kimmy. It's not all virtual vikings, this time. There's been a dead girl and thirty-five hostages, so far."  
  
"You always end up in the weird ones, don't you, Ringo?"  
  
"Yeah, maybe because I'm not the one of us who went straight." Langly snatched his glasses out of Reid's hand and put them back on, before squeezing that hand in thanks.  
  
"Look where it got you," Kimmy shot back. "You should've done it years ago. It's like I always said. You were good enough to get where I am. Before the crash? You could've been out by the Bay with champagne and hookers. Now, you don't even exist except as some figment of the feds."  
  
"I had better things to do, Kimmy, and I still do. There's a killer out there, and she framed Vanity, and she might be coming after you, all right, so stop fluffing your damn ego and think!" Langly's hand worked Reid's fingers like a stress ball. "Anything you know about Vanity's students. Or Lisa's life besides Jimmy. _Anything_."  
  
"I think I still have wedding pictures, maybe. I didn't go. I didn't even know Jimmy was going to do it, but I guess they were in Vegas for something else, and decided to jump the shark."  
  
"Tie the knot," Langly corrected, automatically.  
  
"Jump the shark," Kimmy repeated. "You knew Jimmy. You know how ridiculous this sounds. If you were reading this on usenet, you'd think someone was just making shit up for attention."  
  
"That... yeah, okay, I was pretty surprised to find out he was married," Langly admitted. "It was _not_ a very Jimmy thing to do. It wasn't the kind of thing that happened to guys like us."  
  
"You're still single, aren't you?" Kimmy sounded insufferably smug, in that moment.  
  
"None of your god damn business," Langly snapped. "Get to the point."  
  
"The _point_ is that almost nobody was with them at the wedding. He's there with three pretty girls in leather, and one of them's supposedly his wife, and I think maybe there's a preacher or something dressed up like a druid. It was some pretty over the top weird shit." Kimmy laughed. "I'm kind of surprised none of the rest of us got drunk enough to do something like that."  
  
"Maybe we did, and we were too drunk to remember. Have you checked, recently?" Langly laughed nervously.  
  
"Only for myself. Being that I just got married while sober." Kimmy sounded entirely serious by the next sentence. "Liv's smart, Ringo. Smart like us. She's not some con bunny -- she's the real deal, and she just ... _married me_. Me! Did I ever look like the kind of guy who would get that kind of lucky?"  
  
"You did take a crack at Yves. I mean, she was a voluptuous meatsack of tits and evil, but you were looking in the right general direction." Langly paused, trying to figure out how to get back on the subject. "Look, can you send us copies of your brother's wedding photos? And like... anything else you might have inherited from him with other people in the background?"  
  
_Get his wedding photos, too_ , Reid scrawled on the pad on the table.  
  
"And photos of your wedding. I'd say I'm sorry I missed it, but you ditched my funeral." Langly realised what he'd just asked for and gave Reid a confused look.  
  
Reid drew a box around the word wedding and wrote, _'Trigger?'_  
  
Langly didn't look less confused.  
  
"Yeah, well. I know how you are about corpses. I didn't think you'd want anyone seeing you as one," Kimmy said, dismissively.  
  
Langly sputtered and Kimmy laughed.  
  
"Good to know I can still do that to you."  
  
"Muscle memory," Langly ground out. "Look, I'm handing you back to the fed. Just tell him what he wants to know."  
  
"Look me up if you're ever in town. We'll have drinks."  
  
Langly pretended he hadn't heard and offered the phone to Reid, before he leaned forward and put his head between his knees. Slow deep breaths. None of this was real. _All of this was real_. Fifteen years? Seventeen? It wasn't enough distance.   
  
Kimmy's voice brought things back in a way that even working with the Black Queen hadn't. Maybe because he'd never worked with her before everything imploded. They knew each other. He'd helped her think some things through. But, they hadn't been _friends_ , really. And sure Vanity was involved, but he hadn't interacted with Vanity since this whole thing started -- Vanity was just a name, not a whole person like she'd been before. There was a distance. 'She'. He hadn't even known that.  
  
But, Kimmy? He'd been ... something with Kimmy. Friends. Rivals. Quick fucks in inappropriate places. And Kimmy had just stepped out of the mists of being someone he used to know back to someone he'd _just_ spoken to. And things had changed, yeah. Things always did. But, the underlying thread was the same as it had always been, and the nineties crashed against the inside of his head like ten tons of rushing water.  
  
The next thing outside his head that Langly became aware of was Reid's hand on his back.  
  
"Langly? You all right?"  
  
"No." The word dripped with condescension. A few more breaths and Langly managed to put together a sentence that wouldn't peel paint. "Grab me a coffee?"  
  
The couch shifted as Reid stood up, quietly edging around the coffee table to get the coffee he'd put on before making that call.  
  
Langly's glasses slid off and hit the floor as he folded his hands over the back of his head. "And a bucket?" he called after Reid.  
  
"Kick the rug out of the way if you throw up, before I get back," Reid requested as he set down the coffee and kept moving. "It'll only be a minute."  
  
"Thanks," Langly muttered, eyes still squeezed tight shut.  
  
The smell of coffee was joined by a whiff of bleach and the sound of Reid making his way back around the table. The couch dipped and Langly swore he could feel the warm spot next to him, even though Reid wasn't nearly close enough for that.  
  
"I'm fine. I swear." The words had teeth, as if maybe if Langly gave them enough force, they'd be true.  
  
"You sound like me," Reid teased. "I'm pretty sure that's what I said the last time I got shot."  
  
"Go to hell." Langly sat up just far enough to grab the coffee, elbows supporting him against his knees, as he breathed in the scent. "For someone who lives like a monk, you buy pretty good coffee."  
  
"If I were a monk, I'm pretty sure I'd be in violation of my vows, by now." Reid tried to keep up the patter, as Langly dragged himself out of whatever memory that had been. "But, the coffee is one of a small number of vices. Pure indulgence, on some level." And completely necessary, on another.  
  
Langly reached out with one foot and pulled the barf bucket over so he could hold it between his feet as he finally put coffee in his mouth. It was almost a minute before he swallowed, but it didn't come back up. "So, that was a first I could've done without."  
  
"First time for everything," Reid offered quietly. "It's just because you're far enough away that it finally all fits in a single view. You look back and it's all there at once."  
  
"Okay, so... How do you do it?" Langly tried to drink as much of the coffee as he could get into his mouth without sitting the rest of the way up.  
  
"A lot like that, actually. Every once in a while, I lose half a day. Usually, it's just a few seconds here and there, but sometimes it's pretty bad." Reid looked at his own hands like he wasn't sure if he was supposed to be doing something with them. "I told you. I don't sleep much."  
  
His phone vibrated against the table as Kimmy's email arrived, bearing a link to the directory Kimmy was still in the process of loading photos into.  
  
"We all knew Kimmy was going to go straight. Or at least fake it well enough to make a killing doing it. I just... I don't want to say forgot. I didn't forget. We just... diverged. I died and he kept living the life he kept talking about making for himself. I didn't forget, I just stopped looking, because staying in touch is a little hard when you're not supposed to be alive. I didn't want to get bitter." Langly laughed, and the bitterness he'd been avoiding spilled out in a sound that rivalled bad truck stop coffee. "I wonder how he's taking it."  
  
"We _did_ just make him revisit his brother's death."  
  
"He was over that five minutes after it happened," Langly scoffed, putting his very good coffee back on the table and holding out a hand for the phone. "Let me see if I know any faces."  
  
"He's still scanning things," Reid replied, opening the message in case there was anything of interest beyond the first line. A tiny laugh caught behind his lips. "He says I should, and I quote, 'take care of that dumb hippy'. Apparently, you're 'only second-best, but still pretty good'."  
  
"Yeah, he always took it personally that I had better hair." Langly managed a wicked smile as he toed the bucket under the table. "I'm just going to leave that there, for a bit. I don't want to clean the floor, if I'm wrong."  
  
Reid stretched and paused halfway in, with a look at Langly that said the arm was available, if he wanted it.  
  
"Thought you weren't into hugs," Langly muttered, shoving himself over and leaning into Reid.  
  
"I'm not." Reid wrapped an arm around Langly's back, resting a hand on his upper arm. "You looked like you needed one, and I like you."  
  
"So, you're willing to overcome your dislike of hugs and take the risk I'm going to barf in your lap, huh? Brave man."  
  
"You're the one who walked into my apartment in broad daylight."  
  
That was the last straw. Langly lunged for the bucket and emptied his stomach into it, taking just long enough for one shaky breath before it started again.  
  
"Sorry." Reid winced and reached for Langly's coffee cup. "I'll get more coffee."  
  
"Better coffee than mouthwash," Langly panted before his mouth filled with bile again.  
  
"I would _never_ put mint on top of that." Reid tried not to remember the number of times he'd done that to himself, as he got up and stepped over the corner of the table, toward the kitchen. Coffee did not go well with spearmint; coffee vomit even less so.


	9. Chapter 9

Two hours later, Reid got back to the office, slightly more rumpled than he would normally let himself be, in public, satchel slung across one shoulder and the bag of sandwiches in the other hand. He knocked at the door of Garcia's office and ignored the way JJ's eyebrows lifted when she let him in.  
  
"Well, that's not what you were wearing when you left," JJ pointed out.  
  
"Things occurred," Reid said, completely unhelpfully, handing off the bag and patting at his sleeves to make sure the damp hadn't soaked through where he'd rolled them up. He nodded to Rossi, who had cleared himself a spot on a cabinet behind JJ.  
  
"Apparently a lot of things happened," Garcia noted, spinning her chair around and holding a hand out to JJ. "Fitz tells me Frank's not getting any more work done, today. You want to tell me something?"  
  
"Not really!" Reid blinked and smiled tightly. "He helped me get those photos out of Kimmy Belmont. I couldn't have done it without him, but... I'm not surprised he's taking the rest of the day off." He levelled a look at Rossi. "You know how it is when you haven't seen somebody in fifteen years."  
  
Rossi rocked back in sympathy, nodding. "That is... not the easiest thing to do, especially if you're not expecting it." He paused. "So, who's going to be the first one to tell me who 'Frank' really is? Because I just went through the remains of the X-files, waiting on that sketch, and someone should _probably_ tell me I'm wrong. Unless, of course, I'm not."  
  
Reid looked Rossi right in the eye. "I have no idea what you're talking about, so I'm not going to say anything." Especially not that Richard Langly was wearing his pyjamas and napping in his new favourite chair, after a much-needed hot bath.  
  
"I see." Rossi's voice was the exact shade of neutral that sounded like a warning.  
  
"So, about those pictures!" Garcia covered her mouth with one hand and held a sandwich in the other. "I think we may have her! I've got a ... bridesmaid, I guess, about the right height, with blonde hair and blue eyes. But, Kimmy says he doesn't know who she is, so we're back to where we started."  
  
"But, with more photo," JJ said, between bites of coleslaw and potato. "We can put that--"  
  
"Exactly nowhere," Reid cut in. "This isn't our case."  
  
JJ huffed in frustration. "Right. No press. Can we give it to the CIA? She's misusing their property..."  
  
"And because she's most likely an American citizen, they'll give it right back to us." Rossi nodded. "I like it. Then we've been invited right back in to our case from a completely different angle."  
  
Garcia blinked and tried to figure out where to put her sandwich down. "Wait wait wait, I have to get the guacamole off my fingers first."  
  
Rossi shook his head. "Finish eating. You need to eat."  
  
"I've been eating!" Garcia protested.  
  
"Yeah, chips and chocolate from the vending machine." JJ gestured at the bin she could see into from where she was sitting. "You should probably finish a real meal before this becomes our case again."  
  
"I didn't go out and get you a sandwich so you could forget to finish it," Reid teased, still not sitting down. He wasn't quite sure he was staying. Leaving Langly alone in his apartment bothered him in ways he couldn't quite put his finger on, but the idea of getting Langly back out of the building in the middle of the day bothered him even more.  
  
Rossi peered into the bag and realised there was only one more sandwich. He held it out to Reid.  
  
"No, that one's yours. I already ate. I figured there was only room for so many of us in here, and once you add the sandwiches, it would be an accident waiting to happen. If I could cut that number down by one, there would be that much less chance of one of us wearing half a sandwich." Actually, he'd eaten a few bites of a sandwich while Langly had been in the bath and left the rest in the fridge, but close enough. He leaned back against the cabinet he'd been occupying of late, as a dizzying yawn struck him.  
  
"You were teaching this morning, weren't you?" JJ asked, and Reid nodded, eyes still squeezed shut as he tried to find his balance.  
  
"Grading last night, teaching this morning, and I've already driven across town four or five times, today. I've reached a point where I'm considering buying stock in Starbucks, because the only thing holding me up, right now, is coffee." Reid yawned again. "I slept and everything! I shouldn't be tired! And I still have to finish reviewing the crime scene assessments before tomorrow, which I'd already have done, but I drove across town four times, instead. Have I mentioned I'm on _leave_?" He laughed weakly.  
  
"You should be sipping daiquiris with a good book," Rossi teased.  
  
"If I never see another daiquiri again, I'm pretty sure I'll be better for it." A tart smile crept across Reid's face.  
  
"Well, that sounds like a story worth hearing." JJ blinked and grinned, obviously waiting for it.  
  
"If you ever hear it, you should tell me about it, because all I remember is that there were daiquiris." Reid shrugged as innocently as he could manage.  
  
Garcia froze while chewing, a gob of guacamole dripping audibly from her sandwich onto the paper beneath. Technically, Reid had just given her permission to send the photos to JJ. In front of witnesses. Practically, she wasn't sure she wanted to do any such thing. She'd seen the escalation of pranks between Reid and Morgan.  
  
"Go home, kid," Rossi suggested. "Get a nap. The coffee's not going to hold you up, forever."  
  
Reid opened his mouth, statistics on caffeine-assisted alertness on the tip of his tongue, but JJ cut him off.  
  
"Reid, we love you. Go home. Stay there."  
  
"I'll call you if anything interesting happens," Garcia promised. "But, even if they hand it back to us, it ... doesn't have to be your case. It's not even supposed to involve you at all, but I dragged you into it, because I didn't know who else to call. You're on leave. Really. Get some sleep."  
  
"You can pry this case from my cold, dead hands." Reid smiled a little too brightly. "Call me when the CIA gives it back. Let me know if you figure out who she is, and I'll--" _ask Frank about the name_ , he'd almost said. "... do whatever you want me to with that information." He gave Garcia a look. "And if I'm going home, you should, too. You've been here longer than I have."  
  
"I've had more sleep than you," Garcia argued. "I don't have to drive home to get it."  
  
"She's also not yawning and almost falling over," JJ pointed out.  
  
"Gravity works," Reid argued, gesturing at Garcia, as he yawned again. "She's sitting down!"  
  
Garcia just lifted her chin at him.  
  
"Okay! Okay. I'm going. Call me if anything changes." Reid let himself back out of the room and heard JJ lock the door behind him. He wondered if Prentiss had any idea what was going on, yet. Probably just enough to know not to let her name be attached to it. This was going to hit the fan bloodily, at some point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's short, but the next one more than makes up for it, which I know because I'm only halfway through it.


	10. Chapter 10

Langly woke up suddenly, his dreams peeling away as reality shrunk down to the sound of a key turning in a lock. His vision would only take in the door, as he tried to remember where he was and why this wasn't his bed. A chair -- Reid's chair. Right. He watched through his eyelashes as Reid came in, gun drawn as he came through the door. It was almost comforting to watch him clear the apartment.  
  
By the time Reid appeared beside the chair, the gun was gone, vanished into the safe Langly should have checked for while he was gone. Langly knew he should've gone through everything in the apartment, just on principle, but he was out of his head and really, he didn't want to know. He liked Reid. That was probably going to get him killed, but so was everything else that mattered in life.  
  
"Hey," Reid crouched and touched Langly's hand.  
  
"I'm up, I'm up..." Langly stretched and yawned. A soft smile rose up as his face settled. "And I can think of much worse things to wake up to. What time is it? Did you get her?"  
  
"No, but we've identified her face. She's in the photos Kimmy sent. The team's negotiating a return to the case with the CIA, so we can actually do something with that."  
  
"Then what the hell are you doing here?" Langly nudged Reid's knee with his foot.  
  
"I got sent home for yawning." Reid cleared his throat and offered a lopsided smile. "Apparently, I'm supposed to take a nap and finish my grading for tomorrow. They'll call me if anything changes."  
  
"And has Her Majesty figured out both of us disappearing at once?"  
  
"Maybe," Reid admitted. "I told her I went to you to get the pictures out of Kimmy and you needed a break."  
  
Langly nodded. "She's not stupid."  
  
"Someone's going to ask, soon," Reid agreed, sighing. "What do you want to do about it?"  
  
"I thought you were good at this!" Langly retorted, moving over to make room for Reid in the chair.  
  
"The last time I had to do this, nobody knew my-- Nobody knew her. I only saw her face once. I never got to hold her hand." Reid didn't get up, just staring into the space between the chair and his knees. "I thought... I thought this would turn out like that. But, here we are, and this is a much more hands-on experience. And they're all looking at both of us, so it's a little more obvious."  
  
"Just don't give them Byers and Frohike. That's all I ask." Langly rubbed his face.  
  
"That's not going to come from me," Reid promised, looking up sharply. "Garcia knows who and where you are, and so does JJ, because she was there when I got sent to get you, the first time. And Garcia already did her best to cover that trail, so, no. Nobody's going to hear about you from us."  
  
"But, you're going to be up to your neck in secret girlfriend rumours."  
  
"That's not that unusual for me." Reid laughed. "Everyone eventually decides they were imagining things. Usually, they _are_. They'll get over it. Once the case is over and I go back to behaving like I'm expected to, no one will keep looking. I can blame any weirdness on trying to do too many things at once. Even I need a break, every once in a while."  
  
"So, you're just going to tell them they're hallucinating."  
  
"I'm not going to tell them anything. I'm just going to stare at people in confusion and change the subject." Reid finally approached the space in the chair, moving slowly, in case Langly changed his mind.  
  
"How does that even work?" Langly complained, adjusting himself around Reid's body. "You work with profilers!"  
  
"It works because I'm like that all the time. It's exactly what people expect from me." Reid's eyes gleamed mischievously above a tiny smile, as he put a hand on Langly's hip and finally let himself relax.  
  
"You're really fucking dangerous," Langly observed, tossing a leg over Reid's hip.  
  
"To myself and others, as previously noted," Reid quipped. He paused, just soaking in the awareness of Langly's body and the chair around them. "I could get used to this."  
  
"I want to live in a world where getting used to this is a reasonable expectation and not some lunatic pipe dream that I'm going to try for anyway." Langly sighed and shifted up another couple of inches to rest his chin on top of Reid's head. "And on that note, your nightmares keep waking me up. What do I do with that? I mean, do you want me to wake you up?"  
  
Reid pulled back, mortified, pressing himself against the arm of the chair to get the room to look up at Langly's face. "I'm so sorry. I--"  
  
"Stop." Langly cut him off and took a firm grip on his arm. "I don't know how far down the rabbithole you followed my paper trail, if you think I can't handle nightmares. I just don't like not knowing what to do. Do I need to wake you up? Do I need to stop touching you?"  
  
"I don't know," Reid admitted. "There's not usually anyone else to wake up with them."  
  
"Right, well, if I'm making them worse, just tell me and we'll try something else."  
  
"As long as I can get three consecutive uninterrupted hours a night, I'll be fine." Reid relaxed a bit, but didn't move closer until Langly nudged him. "And right now, I'm realising it's been a while."  
  
"So, sleep." Langly shrugged. "It's what I'm doing." He paused and wound his leg a little tighter around Reid. "Unless you want me to make sure you're tired enough to sleep straight through..."  
  
"I have had so much coffee..." Reid laughed uncomfortably.  
  
"I promise I washed my mouth out." Langly smiled awkwardly over Reid's head.  
  
"Is that an invitation?"  
  
"It could be."  
  
Reid considered how many hours he'd spent going over the two nights he'd spent with Langly, thinking and re-thinking every breath, every touch, equal parts desire and second-guessing himself. He felt selfish and stupid, and that was a horrible basis for a relationship, and the terror of it being a relationship, of it becoming something else that could be taken away from him, of it becoming a death sentence for Langly -- and that was really it. He shouldn't be doing this. He was doing it again, and it was going to end the same way. And all the markers were already there. And this time, he was up against something even more dangerous than a stalker, if Langly was right, and Reid had no real reason to doubt that he was, given the evidence available.  
  
"Okay, that's a lot of thinking." Langly leaned back to get a look at Reid.  
  
"I'm thinking this is a horrible idea, and I shouldn't have dragged you into it, and I really shouldn't have pushed you as hard as I did, today."  
  
" _Pushed_? I jumped. That's not you, that's me. You gave me an opportunity and I jumped onto this garbage barge with both eyes open. Just so you know? I've actually jumped onto a real garbage barge, before, and this is a lot more pleasant, already." Langly's hand twitched before he decided not to reach for Reid's face and it settled back where it had been against Reid's shoulder. "Don't get me wrong. This is entirely fucked up, and I haven't been this afraid for my life since that time with the space lasers, but ... I'm happy. And it's a different kind of happy, which is weird, but I'll take it."  
  
Reid blinked. "Space... lasers?"  
  
"Oh my god, don't get me started. We'll be here all night, and I can't prove any of it from here." Langly laughed weakly. "The important part of all of that was that I'm perfectly happy riding this garbage barge into the sunset with you, if you're up for it. I've done stupider things for worse reasons."  
  
"We've met four times under extreme stress, and I'm not sure that's really a good foundation--"  
  
"So what?" Langly squinted in confusion. "Maybe the case ends and everything falls apart? Again: so what? You're afraid it's not going to last forever?"  
  
And when Langly put it so plainly, Reid could see it. That, in fact, he did tend to plan for 'forever' or at least as far into the foreseeable future as possible. He valued stability. Predictability. Which, of course, was why he'd thrown himself into a line of work where he was never sure when he was going to be home or where he'd be a week from now. But, that was part of it, of course. Everything needed to make a certain simple sense, when he was home, so he could do that.  
  
"Yes. No." Reid huffed in frustration. "You said I live like a monk, and I laughed it off, but you're right. Simplicity. Quiet contemplation. Everything is where I left it, once I get home. People say the kind of crime we investigate doesn't make sense. 'Senseless violence'. You hear it all the time. But, it does make sense. Every time. There's some combination of events, attitude, and environment that leads certain people to act out in ways that don't make sense to anyone else. But, they do make sense. There's always an internal logic. And that's what we do. We find the internal logic. Which is why this case bothers me so much -- I can't get my head around what she's looking for. Not with any sort of precision. Every time I think I'm getting close, it's not that, because it _doesn't_ make sense." He shook his head. "You had a point, Spencer. Right. I know you're trying to cut down on the chaos. The phone was a wonderful idea. But, I get the impression you thrive on chaos -- spontaneous, impulsive, daring... I don't think I can keep up, and I don't want to drag you down. And that's not the point I meant to make, either."  
  
"Listen, you do mathematics, right? You know grids? Every man needs a zero point -- something that's the same, to come back to. Somewhere to start from. I have that. You have that. Frohike and Byers will always be my zero, zero. Hell, high water, and death will not change that. But, one point of contact is not enough. And you... you're smart. I like the way you think, even if we don't have a lot of subjects in common. You're smart, you're hot, and I am completely weak for that thing you do with your tongue. The only button I even have that you don't hit is the one that only lights up for tits. And that's all this has to be, right now. If it gets to be something serious, then we'll do serious. But, you just said it -- we've been in the same room four times, and three of those have ended in something resembling bed, and two of them have involved some of the best --" Langly cleared his throat and glanced down between them. "You know I have absolutely no control over that, right? But, every time I even start thinking about the other night... There's a problem I didn't miss having."  
  
A surprised chirp of a laugh caught in Reid's throat.  
  
"But, you're right. I can't promise you forever." This time, Langly caught Reid's chin with one knuckle, tipping it up to make up for the difference in height produced by the chair. "But, if you don't take that first step, you'll never know if it could happen. Come on, it's a garbage barge of an idea, but it could be our garbage barge."  
  
"I think that's one of the least romantic things anyone's ever said to me." Reid managed a small, wary smile.  
  
"Yeah, well. I don't do romance. I wouldn't know it if it bit me on the ass." Langly's lips pulled tight as he made a decision. "But, if you like that kind of thing, and you'll put up with me fucking it up ridiculously a few times, I'll learn it. It can't be that hard, right? I mean, what, flowers and good coffee and sitting on the roof at night? I ... might have to turn down the roof thing. There may or may not still be a distinctly irate satellite with a laser looking for me. But, I can definitely do good coffee."  
  
"Please don't send flowers." Reid strangled a laugh. "They die so quickly and then they're just all over the place."  
  
Langly's eyes gleamed and his smile suggested he had ideas. "I've got something for that."  
  
"You really want to try this, don't you?"  
  
"Frohike is already designing my tombstone, and I'm mostly okay with that. I should call Byers in a few hours and let him know I'm still alive, though. He gets whiffy and starts doing stupid shit, if he suspects things are going bad."  
  
"Less tombstone jokes," Reid breathed, pressing his forehead against Langly's shoulder hard enough to leave a mark. "I can't..."  
  
"Shit, sorry."  
  
"And that's the other thing. I can't ... I don't think I can handle putting you in danger."  
  
"I'm putting myself in danger, thanks, and I can handle that for myself. Maybe I'd do it because I want to be with you, but that's my decision, and you don't get to take responsibility for that." Langly was firm on that point, voice brooking no argument. "I'm a grown man -- older than you, if you need the reminder -- and I can take responsibility for my own decisions. And this is one I'm willing to make. Enthusiastic, even. Both eyes open, both feet on board. So, knock it off. If I mean 'no', I'll say it, and nothing short of Byers going off the deep end again will move me."  
  
"My last relationship ended with my... Do I even call her my girlfriend, if we never met? I _loved her_ , Langly. I still do. I would give my right eye. I would give my life. And I said it. I said I'd die for her, and I meant it." Reid looked up until he caught Langly's eyes. "And that's how I got her killed."  
  
"It's not going to happen again," Langly assured him. "It's not going to happen to me."  
  
"I don't really think you're in a position to say that with any kind of certainty," Reid shot back.  
  
"Yeah, I think I am. It's me we're talking about. I'm pretty sure the only thing I have to worry about are snipers, and there's _nothing_ you can do about that. Can't make it better. Can't make it worse. Either I get spotted or I don't. It's not personal. There's no negotiation. And, really, with pretty basic decisions, I can be pretty sure no one's going to make out who I used to be." Langly rubbed the corner of Reid's jaw. "There's a very small chance anyone's still looking. There's a smaller chance anyone still looking is going to suddenly find me _now_. The chance of you having any role in this at all approaches zero. I mean, really, my theoretically impending death is on the order of 'am I going to get hit by a bus, tomorrow'." His eyes squeezed shut and his lips tightened. "Okay, that was a little ... Jimmy aside, the bus question is --"  
  
"I know the bus question. And the answer is that it's stupid to stay inside because you might get hit by a bus, because it's still so statistically improbable as to be irrelevant." Reid nodded, eyes closed. The next sentence was nearly inaudible. "I want this. I want to try." A smile touched one corner of his mouth as his eyes opened. "I like the way you look at me."  
  
"Like you're the best thing that ever fell into my lap and I keep expecting to be slapped awake in a Kentucky jail?"  
  
A giggle sprung out of Reid, but the laugh didn't stop until tears were running down his face and he choked on every inhale. "Sorry. I know it's not that funny."  
  
"You are _way_ the hell too tired for any of this," Langly decided, having watched Byers do this a few times, over the years. "Where is the magical drawer that spawns your pyjamas? You shouldn't sleep in your clothes, like this. That's not going to end well, if you're this tired."  
  
"Just help me get out of this shirt. I can't make the buttons work."  
  
"How much coffee have you had?" Langly asked, batting Reid's hands out of the way and working his way down the buttons. "You're shaking."  
  
"Not that much. A few cups." Reid shrugged out of his shirt and hung it on the corner of his desk.  
  
"Did you ever actually eat that sandwich?"  
  
"It's in the fridge. I had a little."  
  
"So, even if I only count the cups I know about, you were probably up to seven before you came to get me, and you've had at least three more, since. And you still haven't had breakfast."  
  
"Breakfast is optional," Reid muttered, kicking off his trousers but not his socks, without shaking Langly's leg off his hip.  
  
"Only on the first day." Langly huffed in amusement.  
  
"I'll eat when I get up." Reid pulled Langly closer. "So, what was that about making sure I was tired enough to sleep?"  
  
"You're so tired I'm not sure you can sit up without help."  
  
"Ten cups of coffee that we're both reasonably sure of. I'm not sleeping without help, either." Reid's eyes gleamed with caffeinated mischief as he tugged at Langly's hair and turned his face up for a kiss.  
  
"And you're afraid _you_ can't keep up with _me_?" Langly laughed with the last breath he had before his lips met Reid's.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short, but smut, for certain values of smut. I don't know if this chapter makes any sense if you haven't been _that tired_.

Reid drifted in and out of consciousness, micronapping as Langly's hands caressed him. In the seconds he was awake, between strange dreams unfurling behind his eyes, he kissed back, let his hands clutch encouragingly. Everything turned beautiful in the space between waking and sleeping, a brightly-coloured liminal gap of pleasure and desire, filled with the deafeningly-whispered philosophies of hundreds of angels, serpents and feathers and the open sky occupying all the space Langly didn't. His mind seemed to assign locations and meaning to sensations at random -- a flick of tongue against his neck became sheets of water cascading down his arm, a touch of lips became a flock of birds and butterflies bursting, startled, off his chest. Everything was beautiful and new, chaotic and astounding, and some part of him knew he should be afraid, but for once, he pushed it away and let wonders unfold around him. This was what he got for not sleeping, and at least it was better than the usual assortment of high-octane nightmares that surfaced at moments like these. 'Better'. Like butterkäse was better than beating one's head against a wall.  
  
At some point, he must have moved, because it took him a moment to find his hands, where they gripped the back of the chair, over his head. The chair vibrated under him, like the purring of some mythical beast, and he sprawled along it, bare, like a willing sacrifice to the god above him, perched across his lap. He knew he was hallucinating, but it was like he was seeing Langly for the first time, paper-white and glowing in the late afternoon sun. Glowing. Shirtless. Maybe this _was_ the first time. He couldn't remember why it mattered.  
  
Langly's voice cut through the angelic conversation that blotted out almost everything else. "You sure you're okay?"  
  
Reid's consciousness cut out and back, before he could answer, filling his mind with something that might have been the devotions of Saint Theresa, but the words faded as he returned to the scene in progress. "Did you ask me something?" He blinked, as if seeing Langly for the first time, all over again. "You're so beautiful."  
  
Langly's eyes crossed in confusion. "I'm... _what_? Okay, now I _know_ you're tired. You should really try sleeping."  
  
"No, I mean it. The light... You're incredible." Reid gazed up in amazement. "You're beautiful, you're naked, and you're sitting in my lap, and I have no idea what I have ever done in my life to deserve this moment, but I'm absolutely open to you improving it even more."  
  
Langly laughed, pulling his arms back to cover himself. "God, I hope you remember this when you wake up. I can't wait to see your face."  
  
Reid reached up to catch Langly's wrists, half expecting the light to spill down his own arms. "Kiss me. I want you."  
  
Langly looked like he might be having second thoughts about whether Reid was coherent enough for any of this.  
  
Reid pulled, gently -- a suggestion more than a demand.  
  
"I hope you remember this..." Langly sighed, leaning down to press his lips against Reid's.  
  
The response was immediate, Reid arching and writhing, arms winding around Langly, pulling him down until they were pressed tight enough that the sweat between them made a sound with every breath. His breathing quickened, and he gasped at the air from Langly's mouth, as Langly began to tremble in his arms.  
  
Langly shivered like he'd been dipped in snow, but made no move to pull away, rolling his hips against Reid's. "Tell me," he breathed against Reid's lips.  
  
"More." The word was one of the few Reid was sure he could use correctly in that moment. Another was "Yes," which also passed his lips. But, even the words fell out of the sounds of desire that spilled from him, as Langly's flesh slid sweat-slicked against his own. Twined serpents, a flash of red feathers... the world became less coherent as the intensity increased. All Reid could be sure of was that he never wanted it to stop. The sound of his own voice rang distantly in his ears, breathless and raw, carrying the rhythm of Langly's body against him.  
  
And then the pleasure bloomed in his chest and every petal that unfurled was a transcendent agony of perfection. Every desire that could be found in his memory rang like glass when struck. It wasn't half enough, and then it was all too much, and he wanted it to last forever. But, as the thrill drained from his flesh, awareness did as well, and his last semi-conscious act was to hum with contentment and smile exhaustedly at the beautiful dream still panting against his lips. He felt Langly's body tighten against him, some unknown time later, completely certain that he felt the explosion of feathers against his palms as Langly's shoulders tensed.  
  
As Langly's senses returned to him, the first thing he noticed was that Reid had fallen asleep under him, a blissful smile still clinging to his lips. The second thing was that Reid was still exactly in the middle of the chair.  
  
"God damn it," Langly muttered, trying to find a position he still fit in the chair that wasn't going to make his legs numb in another five minutes, which was the problem with the way he was already kneeling across Reid's lap. He couldn't feel his toes on one side, and the vibrations were actually making that worse.  
  
The FBI phone, as Langly had started thinking of it, chirped in Reid's bag, and he leaned over to at least check what had happened, assuming it would be about the case.  
  
A message from Garcia showed on the lock screen. ' _Texting so I don't wake you. We have the case back. The paperwork will finish going through tomorrow morning._ '  
  
Ah, the pace of bureaucracy. Late afternoon, and nobody could finish the paperwork, before they went home. Langly sighed and slipped the phone back into the compartment where Reid kept it. Whatever. He'd mention it when Reid woke up -- at _least_ three hours from now.  
  
Somehow, he managed to cram himself sideways-ish into the sliver of space between Reid's side and one arm of the chair -- a space that would have been a fantastic size, if Reid had been even another four inches off-centre. But, he'd take it. He really didn't want to be awake and alone in a place with no computers. Langly added a laptop to the list of things he was going to have to start carrying, if he spent any more time here. Conditioner, lube, and a laptop. And a toothbrush, because there were only so many days a man could wake up to the taste of yesterday's coffee and not be able to wash it away.  
  
Langly pulled the blanket around them, ignoring the wet spot on Reid that had probably dripped down to the chair -- there was nothing it wouldn't wash off later -- and he wondered if this was what he'd been missing out on, if _this_ was the feeling Byers had been agonising over, all those nights he spent crying about Susanne. And now that he could feel it in his chest, in the soles of his feet, that all made a great deal more sense. Still, just because it made more sense didn't mean it made enough sense that he'd stop giving Byers hell about it. The man just totally lost the ability to think with his head when Susanne came up in conversation, and that was something Langly had watched enough that he had no intention of repeating it. Like Byers said, he'd done enough of it for all of them, and Langly would be the first to agree. Still, he liked the way his toes tingled, when Reid smiled. He thought he could live with that without doing anything too stupid.


	12. Chapter 12

Reid woke, shortly after dark, to the blanket being whipped off him with enough force to generate a breeze. "What're you--?"  
  
"Where's that talentless whore you obviously let touch you?" A voice in the dark demanded. Androgynous, but with a strong Brooklyn accent.  
  
It was happening again. And this time, it was happening in his home. Reid felt his entire body go loose, eyes flat, face expressionless. "I don't know what you're talking about. You're going to have to give me some context. You just woke me up, and--"  
  
The sound of the safety being released on a pistol followed. "Don't you fuck with me. Where is Richard Langly?"  
  
"Pretty obviously not in bed with me, I'd say." Reid gestured to the chair, empty except himself, and wondered where the hell Langly had gone. Probably to the bathroom. Coffee goes in, coffee comes out. "Naked, in bed, sleeping? I know you don't know me, but that's not a time you're likely to find anyone else with me."  
  
"Then where did you hide him? I know he was here. You tried so hard to find me, you called Kimmy. Second best, Kimmy, but I'd have settled."  
  
"Because Richard Langly is the best?" Reid tried, remembering the things Langly had said, earlier.  
  
"No! Because it wasn't Kimmy, it was Jimmy!"  
  
"And Jimmy's dead, but he's been dead a long time." Reid stalled, trying to give Langly a chance to do... anything, really. There were four phones in the house, but he didn't think any of them were in the bathroom. His gun was in the bathroom, but Langly wasn't likely to know that or to be able to open the safe. There weren't any windows in there, so going out to get help wasn't going to work, either. But, the evidence said they both usually worked well under pressure, so something would become apparent if he could just keep from getting shot that long. "Why wait so long, and what does Langly have to do with it?"  
  
"Jimmy was mine! The best of the best! But Vanity took my name and she took Jimmy, too. Right in front of me. I held the ring when she married him, and I should have killed her, then."   
  
The shadows in the room began to resolve, and Reid could make out where his attacker stood. Just out of reach, of course. "Why didn't you?"  
  
"Because Kimmy was second best. Kimmy was good enough. Just as handsome and almost as fast."  
  
"And Kimmy just married someone else," Reid tried to sound sympathetic, but it was a little difficult without pants. "But, he tried to protect you. He swore he didn't know who you were. But, he must have..."  
  
"Kimmy never cared about anyone but himself." The small shadow spit the words like venom. "Except _Ringo_ , who obviously slept his way to the top. Most of those jobs could've been done by kids in their parents' basements, but he whored himself into a title."  
  
A glass jar exploded against the corner of the desk, barely missing the shadow. "Excuse the hell out of you," Langly snapped, winging something else from the bathroom counter as the pistol swung away from Reid. "I was there for the _dick_ , not his _hands_. And you weren't missing much, as I found out later."  
  
"And you took him away from me!" The first shot was fired straight through the bathroom door, where Langly wasn't, any more.  
  
"I didn't take him from anyone!" Langly shouted, heaving a decorative bowl of stones he knew was on the table he'd lunged for after the last time he'd spoken. "I was his dirty little secret, and I want to know how the hell you know anything about that!"  
  
"I got up to get ice!"   
  
The rest of the story was lost as Reid grabbed the pyjama pants Langly had left beside the chair and tossed them by the legs over the little shadow's head. He jerked back sharply, raising his knee, as they fell to neck level. The shadow dropped the gun, but struggled and twisted against Reid as Langly finally turned on a light, blinking at the sudden brightness, dim though it was.  
  
"Handcuffs are in my bag," Reid said, after a moment, as the black-clad figure in his grip stopped struggling and sagged heavily. He carefully loosened the cloth and lowered the unconscious body to the ground. "She's alive, but I would really rather she not get up again."  
  
Langly nodded, dizzily, as he took three tries to make the first step toward Reid's satchel, which still rested beside the chair. "I was on the phone with Byers. I didn't want to wake you, so I shut myself in the bathroom. He called Garcia, and now I have to change all those numbers -- his, mine, yours." His fingers felt cold and distant as he found the cuffs and passed them to Reid.  
  
"Thank you," Reid's voice was almost inaudible, the way it stuck in his throat. He took the time to fasten the cuffs, making sure their captive was still breathing, before he moved away, stepping around to where Langly crouched, wrapped in a towel, his head pressed against the arm of the chair.  
  
As Reid sat down beside him, offering an arm, Langly leaned to the side, pouring himself into Reid's lap, pressing his tear-stained face against Reid's neck.  
  
"Did she hit you?" Reid finally asked, and Langly shook his head. "It was you. She was looking for you."  
  
"Figured that out," Langly admitted. "You knew."  
  
"I didn't. I should have, but I didn't, because I really didn't want to see it. But, yeah. I should have." Reid held Langly tighter for a moment, before wondering if he should let go. "I'm sorry. I almost got you killed."  
  
"Shut the hell up, Reid. So what if you did notice? We still didn't know who she was or where she was. What exactly about this investigation would have been different? Nothing."  
  
"Narcisse," came a raspy voice from the middle of the room. "My name is Narcisse. And you'll never forget it."  
  
"Narcisse, and I'll be drinking until I can't remember," Langly snapped, over Reid's shoulder.  
  
"Does someone want to tell me what the hell just happened here? I _live here_. Things like this don't happen here," Reid complained, one hand tightening on Langly's arm, hoping he'd take the cue.  
  
"I'm making my way back to Kimmy, one step at a time," Narcisse explained, as if it were obvious. "Vanity got in my way the first time. Vanity was why I couldn't have Jimmy. I had to make sure she wouldn't get in my way again. She took my name. She had my hands. She made me invisible -- all that work belonged to _her_. I was no one, and then she rubbed it in. She had to suffer for that."  
  
"Okay, but, what about me? I'm dead. I've been dead for fifteen fucking years. Where the hell did you _ever_ get the idea that I was still alive?" Langly was utterly baffled by the idea that someone had found him alive, but hadn't found Byers and Frohike. Or, at least, not that he was aware of.  
  
"I dug up your grave, just to see your rotting face, and found the wrong corpse in the coffin."  
  
"You _opened_ the coffin?" Langly's horror seemed entirely disproportionate, to Reid, until the next sentence. "You opened the _biohazard_ seals?"  
  
"It's been almost twenty years, Ringo. And your death was faked anyway. Pity for you. I wouldn't have noticed it wasn't you, except the gasket and fill for the coffin partially preserved the body, and that looked nothing like you. Especially once the wax mask slid off."  
  
"I'm going to kill Skinner," Langly hissed against Reid's neck. "You dug up my grave because Kimmy used my ass for a jerk socket a few times? You're gonna have a long list."  
  
"Oh, it was much shorter than you think. And you and Olivia are the last ones on it."  
  
Reid's lips tightened and his eyes squeezed shut. A serial who never made their radar, because she'd probably never hit even twice in the same city, until now.  
  
"Because what, you think if you kill his wife, Kimmy's going to go for you?" Langly scoffed.  
  
"I know his type. If I remove everything he could be distracted by, I become the obvious choice. He'll be able to see me clearly."  
  
"Because he won't be looking over anyone else's _head_. Okay, blonde hacker, yes, but you're what, half my height? Olivia? Also taller than him. Even Yves, who wasn't blonde and _I_ got closer to that than he did, and I'll never be able to wash that off well enough." Langly's eye-roll came through in his voice. "He likes having something to look up to, and he's not short. Besides, he's a lousy lay, and you could do so much better."  
  
" _Langly_!" Reid hissed.  
  
"Oh, you'd know, you spineless, talentless _whore_!" Narcisse roared. "You came up on coattails!"  
  
"I did my own work," Langly snapped, shoulders tight in Reid's hands. "And I wasn't so scared I hid behind _Vanity_ , either!"  
  
The argument was interrupted by the sound of a very solid knock at the door. "FBI!" Rossi's voice.  
  
"I think it's open!" Reid called, not wanting to get up from under Langly. "It's definitely clear! Subject's cuffed on the floor!"  
  
It wasn't until the door began to swing open that Reid remembered he was still naked, with a supposedly dead man, wearing only a towel, in his lap.


	13. Chapter 13

Rossi opened the door, but JJ came through it first, slowly lowering her gun as she verified what Reid had said. Finally, her eyes landed on Reid and the lanky blond curled up in his lap, face hidden against his neck.  
  
"I have... _so_ many questions." JJ blinked a few times.  
  
"I'm pretty intent on answering as few of those as possible, if we're being honest." Reid offered a resigned half-smile over Langly's shoulder. "Tell me if you find my pants?" He paused. "Not the pyjama pants. Those are evidence."  
  
"I now have even more questions," Rossi chimed in, glancing at Reid and then looking away as he pushed the door shut.  
  
"Let's just go with the unsub broke into my apartment, threatened me at gunpoint, and now she's alive and cuffed on the floor, which I think is an appropriate disposition." Reid cleared his throat and continued to look like he wished he could melt into the floor. "Blanket? Bedsheet? Anything?"  
  
"You're bleeding, Reid," JJ pointed to his arm.  
  
"I don't actually care." Reid's face continued to bear the most uncomfortable smile JJ had ever witnessed on him. "You'll probably find the skin under Narcisse's nails." He tipped his chin at the woman on the floor.  
  
"So, ah... who's your friend?" Rossi asked, finally, as he came out of the bedroom with a clean bedsheet and draped it over Reid's shoulder.  
  
"I don't want to talk about it." Reid tugged at the sheet with one hand, until he was covered below the chin and Langly was covered completely.  
  
"You have a witness sitting in your lap," Rossi reminded him.  
  
"I have a _victim_ sitting in my lap. I still don't want to talk about it."  
  
"Don't want everyone to know about your whore?" Narcisse's voice dripped venom, like she was just getting started. "Aren't you going to introduce yourself, Ringo, or are you still too busy crying?"  
  
Reid's hand came up to cover the side of Langly's face, as he felt the man coil against him like he might spring up to defend himself.  
  
" _Ringo?_ " JJ's expression passed through stunned on the way to appalled. "And Garcia was afraid to send _me_ in."  
  
Rossi sighed and rubbed his jaw, thoughtfully. "Richard Langly, last known address Arlington National Cemetery."  
  
"Richard Langly is dead," Langly replied, shrugging the sheet off his head and pulling Reid's hand away, so he could look at Rossi. "We never met, but we had a lot of friends in common. Run my prints. I'm Frank Arroway, an old friend of the Black Queen and Jimmy Belmont."  
  
Now he'd put his foot in it, he knew. But, there was no other way out. He wasn't carrying any identification, but he knew it all existed. He'd put it there, the day before. He'd made _very_ sure nothing definitively linked him to himself. Circumstantially, on the other hand... He could feel the shiver start between his shoulders, reaching up his neck.  
  
"You're Richard fucking Langly!" Narcisse howled from the floor. "I saw the fake corpse!"  
  
"Are there still fingers? Maybe you should've checked the prints, because as far as I know, Richard Langly is buried in that grave," Langly insisted, tensing his back in an attempt to stop shaking. He wasn't sure those prints would match, but he was completely certain that neither set in that sentence would match _him_. That had been handled when he'd disappeared in the first place.  
  
"A case of mistaken identity," Reid offered to JJ, face expressionless. "She thought he was Langly and tried to kill him."  
  
"In your house," JJ's eyebrows crept up, the rest of her face remaining unimpressed. "You going to tell me why he's mostly naked in your l..." Her eyes dipped and then came back up to his face. "...iving room?"  
  
"No." Reid shook his head, face still devoid of extra information.  
  
"We will neither confirm nor deny any assumptions at this time," Langly declared. "Except that _that_ woman came in here, uninvited, past a locked door, and _shot at me_. I'm pretty sure that's still illegal in this country."  
  
"Bullet's probably in the tile, behind the bathtub," Reid confirmed. "I haven't looked. I have touched as little as possible, in the aftermath."  
  
"Yeah, the only thing you've put your hands on is Ringo," Narcisse taunted.  
  
"I'd ask you to get her out of here, but I know there's only two of you, for now." Reid took a long, slow breath, finally managing to look completely displeased with the situation at hand.  
  
"There's only one bullet?" JJ asked, making notes as she studied the room. "Looks like a hell of a fight."  
  
"There's two of us and one of her," Reid replied, with a tiny smile. "She only got one shot off, because she had to turn her back to me, to do it."  
  
"I didn't want to shoot you because you don't _matter_!" Narcisse complained.  
  
"Then what about Alondra?" Rossi asked. "Why'd she matter?"  
  
"I liked Lonnie. I really did. She was so beautiful and so smart." Narcisse sounded almost regretful. "But, she was so upset when she found out I was going to get the files. 'Just let me make copies!' she said, and I had to tell her copies wouldn't be good enough. I wanted to be sure no one could follow where I was going. She was going to turn me in. After she committed a felony to help me, she was going to try to turn me in. I'd given enough of my life to a control freak. I didn't need another one. I didn't want to, but ... sometimes you have to look at your own interests and make a choice. She couldn't stay with me. I wish she had."  
  
"You shot her in the back," Langly snapped. "I don't really see how that's her choice not to stay with you."  
  
"She left me. I had to clean up the garbage that left behind." Narcisse let out a sharp bark of a laugh. "No wonder you couldn't make a name for yourself. You have to clean up after yourself, Ringo."  
  
Reid's arms tightened around Langly, as Langly's face blanched and then started to redden with anger. "Don't," he whispered.  
  
Langly looked like he might still try to get up, but he just shook his head and rested it against the side of Reid's face. "Go fuck yourself, you overhyped Vanity clone," he sighed.  
  
"I'll kill you!" Narcisse screamed. "You'll wish you were in that grave! You talentless, cocksucking _freak_! I was going to go easy on you, but now you get to suffer, too! What did Kimmy ever see in you?"  
  
"Nothing." Langly's eyes closed. "Kimmy's never met me. Ringo's dead."  
  
Rossi cleared his throat and crouched beside Reid and Langly, holding out his phone. "Nothing personal, but I do have to check. Can you press your fingers in the boxes, one at a time?"  
  
Langly nodded and opened his eyes just enough to see what he was doing. There was a time he'd have yelled about the intrusion and his right to privacy, but if he wanted to sell this, he was going to have to genuinely commit to getting this identity on paper. He closed his eyes again as Rossi waited for the results.  
  
"François Arroway, born nine eighteen seventy-two, in Manhattan, Kansas, to Miles and Nicolette, last fingerprinted for a racing license to work the Derby in nineteen ninety-seven." Rossi held the results up for JJ. "Pleased to finally meet you, Frank."  
  
JJ shot Reid a stern look, one that strongly implied she'd be having words with him, later, whether he wanted to hear them or not.  
  
Reid shrugged with a look of absolute innocence.  
  
"I'd have preferred other circumstances," Langly drawled. "And pants."  
  
A knock at the door said that either backup or the evidence techs had arrived, and JJ went to let them in.  
  
"Has anyone seen my bathrobe?" Reid asked. "It'll fit him. I know everything in this room is part of the crime scene, and I know that's not in here, unlike everything else either of us has been wearing at any point today."  
  
"And you?" Rossi asked as JJ talked the team at the door through the details of transporting their prisoner.  
  
Reid looked down at himself. "It's a queen size bedsheet. You don't think I know how to wear one? I have many talents of which you remain unaware."  
  
"I think that's the first time I've ever heard wearing a bedsheet described as a talent," Langly muttered.  
  
"It's an art form, if you can turn it into clothing." A wry smile tugged at the corner of Reid's lips. "What about the card?" he finally remembered to ask.  
  
"The CIA declines to confirm who that number has been issued to, but certain friends of ours may have discovered that it was deactivated within three days of a certain series of events in Las Vegas. It was reactivated last year, and used mostly on rental cars and airline tickets."  
  
"You need to check those cities on those dates," Reid urged. "Narcisse confessed to other murders, but didn't name them. Other people she thinks slept with Kimmy Belmont."  
  
"Oh, good. Crazy stalker ex with a new, horrifying twist." Rossi kept his voice low as Narcisse was led out. "So, you and Kimmy Belmont?"  
  
"Ringo and Kimmy Belmont." Langly shrugged. "Apparently. First time anyone's said it to me." Which it was. He'd managed to keep that very quiet and it wasn't like Kimmy would ever admit to it.  
  
JJ came back. "Come on, let's get you two out of here, so we can get the crime scene team in and out."  
  
"I have no pants. I'm not going anywhere without pants," Langly insisted, curling closer around Reid, in case someone decided to argue that point. "I have just been shot at with no pants on, and I think I've earned some fucking pants."  
  
Reid shot Rossi a pleading look. "On the right. Third down. Anything in there should fit him. And there's a brown sweater on the far, far right of the closet."  
  
"Got it." Rossi nodded and went after the clothes, as JJ continued to try to make sense of the scene.  
  
"A jar of cotton swabs?" JJ shot an inquisitive look at Reid.  
  
"I missed, okay?" Langly huffed. "I was trying to hit her in the head from across the room, without my glasses."  
  
"The important thing, here, is that I didn't get shot," Reid added. "And that jar is probably why. Of course, he almost got shot instead, so I'm not really sure about the value of the trade-off there."  
  
"Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. I missed; she missed. All I had to do was keep moving and throwing shit until you could get behind her." Langly smiled grimly. "It gets pretty dark in here, and this towel's blue. I couldn't see her, but I don't think she could see me too well."  
  
JJ held her hands below her shoulder and a little below her hip. "To judge by when I came in, she could see enough of you."  
  
"You do kind of glow in the dark." Reid choked back a laugh.  
  
"Then she should sue her fucking optometrist," Langly retorted, as Rossi returned with the clothes.  
  
"Interesting choice in shirts." Rossi held out the sweater with the hood hooked over his finger.  
  
"Necessary choice in shirts." Reid's tone lacked any hint of the amusement of a moment before. "I don't want any more mistakes. We've had enough for one day. _I've_ had enough for a lifetime." He cleared his throat and gestured for JJ to turn around.  
  
Langly took the shirt and pulled it on over the towel, taking a long, relieved breath as he zipped it. As he stood, holding out a hand for the pants, Reid held the sheet out to cover them both.  
  
"We are almost the same size. Almost." Langly's eyes closed in embarrassment as the trousers failed to zip quite to the top. "Does anyone have a safety pin?"  
  
"But, you fit in my--"  
  
"Elastic."  
  
Reid squeezed his eyes shut in annoyance with himself. "Sorry."  
  
"An unpleasant reminder I'm no longer thirty-five." Langly let out a sound half amusement and half frustration and tugged the shirt down over his hips, yanking the towel out of the tangle of cloth. "I'll live." He ducked under Reid's wrist, to leave him with the sheet.  
  
Reid put one corner of the sheet in his teeth, holding it over his shoulder as he wrapped the opposite corner around his chest twice and tied it over his shoulder. He stood slowly, shaking out the sheet as he moved. "It's not technically a toga, but it covers more of me than necessary to go out in public. And I'm not going to get blood on anything else."   
  
He could've put on actual clothes, and he knew it, but there was a particular sense of control in being able to make something work the way he wanted it to, in a day when so much else had gone wrong. Someone had broken in and nearly killed him and Langly, _in his home_. And now he was going to walk out of it majestically draped in a bedsheet, as an utterly irrational but pettily satisfying middle finger to the universe that had visited this upon him.  
  
Langly pulled his hood up. "Let's do this. I need to get back home, before something stupid happens."  
  
"Pretty sure it's too late for that," Reid reminded him, gesturing to the wreckage scattered across the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relatively sure this is one more chapter, probably with more smut. ... Oh god, I'm going to come back and copyedit this chapter after I sleep. Sorry...


	14. Chapter 14

If Reid had been exhausted the day before, there was no word for the kind of tired he was at this point. He'd been interviewed and reinterviewed until he could recite a believable version of the entire day, from the time he left for class to the time JJ and Rossi had arrived, without lifting his head from the table or opening his eyes. Finally, he'd been turned over to Prentiss, who had looked like she might say something about the bedsheet, but decided not to.  
  
He woke up a few times to the smell of the wrong leather before realising he'd been napping on the couch in Prentiss's office, which was comfortable enough to make him consider replacing his own. It _was_ starting to get a little old. And then the reason he was there hit like a rockslide, and he sat bolt upright, nearly lunging off the couch, before he spotted JJ sitting in a chair turned to watch him, book forgotten in her hand at his sudden movement.  
  
"It's okay," she promised him. "Everything's okay. We made a bit of a mess, and Prentiss is cleaning it up, but none of this is going to end up on us. You did the right thing. Mostly. But, I'm not asking about that, here."  
  
"Don't ask at all." Reid's fingers absently re-tied the knot at his shoulder. "Where is he?"  
  
"Frank? He's with Rossi. He's a victim, here, just like you." JJ gave Reid a firmly dubious look. "A horrible case of mistaken identity."  
  
"I still don't have any pants," Reid finally noticed, effectively changing the subject.  
  
"And your apartment's a crime scene, so you're not getting any pants from there."  
  
Reid leaned forward and buried his face in his hands for a few long breaths. "Has Garcia left the building yet?"  
  
"She didn't want to go home until she was sure you were all right. Come on, I'll walk you over there. You don't look too good, and I want to make sure you get that far." JJ closed the book without marking her place and set it on Prentiss's desk.  
  
"What time is it?" Reid finally thought to ask, as he got up and realised what JJ had meant about him getting even the distance to Garcia's office. The room spun nauseatingly. "There was no clock in the interview room, and obviously I've been sleeping."  
  
"Barely sleeping," JJ scoffed, with a concerned look. "If this is how you've been sleeping lately, it's no wonder you were a mess, yesterday. It's technically morning. You'll notice in another few hours."  
  
There wasn't much Reid could say. JJ had been watching him sleep. "Just nightmares. I don't know if you noticed, but I had a gun pointed at me, in the last twelve hours. I woke up to that. I just need to not wake up to that a few times."  
  
"You need a holiday. An actual holiday. Not an 'oh, you're still working for us, but we're not letting you do your job' holiday." JJ took Reid's arm as he wobbled precipitously.  
  
"I don't need a holiday. What am I going to do with a holiday? I don't need more time to dwell on it."  
  
"Reid? You're not wearing any pants. I'm pretty sure you've got other things to dwell on."  
  
"Yes, because crushing humiliation is such an improvement. Thank you."  
  
"Frank...?" JJ sugggested, and Reid's head swivelled loosely in the direction JJ seemed to be looking, before he realised that wasn't what she meant.  
  
"I have no idea what you're getting at," Reid stubbornly insisted.  
  
"Your neighbours know what I'm getting at. More to the point, they know what you were getting at, yesterday. Apparently, you're loud and he's talented."  
  
Reid pulled away from JJ and leaned heavily on the wall, trying to catch his breath, as the world seemed to spin away from him, sideways. "I'm trying very hard not to dwell on the fact that you know that."  
  
"I meant you could be dwelling on the fact that you apparently have a very enjoyable relationship. Maybe even spend some time together, not working."  
  
"I appreciate the effort, but I'm not thinking about any of that until I'm wearing pants." Reid's smile was bright and cold. "I've embarrassed myself enough for one day, thank you."  
  
"It's technically tomorrow," JJ pointed out, with a small smile.  
  
"Not helping."  
  
The door of Garcia's office flew open and she appeared in it. "You! I thought I heard someone out here! You... don't look good. Come, come, we'll get you a seat. You should obviously be sitting."  
  
Reid let himself be herded into Garcia's office and parked on the cabinet he'd favoured of late. "I should obviously be wearing pants," he pointed out to Garcia. "I'm hoping you can help me solve that problem?"  
  
She cocked her head at him. "I don't think I have anything that would fit you."  
  
Reid choked on a laugh. "No, I mean, I can't go back home. I don't have... anything. Pants. A toothbrush. Coffee. I'd stop and pick something up, but... ah... There's the no pants problem. And the no car problem. I was hoping you could figure out what's open so maybe we could send someone out to get me some pants, before I have to find my way... somewhere. Other than home."  
  
"A hotel. We'll get you somewhere to stay. Don't worry about that," JJ assured him, quickly.  
  
"Not actually worried about that. I just need clothes and someone to drop me back at my car." Reid rubbed one eye with the heel of his palm, clearly exhausted, before both eyes shot open. "And I need to call the Academy, because I'm not--"  
  
"Already took care of that," Garcia replied, before he could finish the thought. "I did that last night, while you were still trying to explain what happened. Everyone's fine with it. They just want to know you're okay."  
  
"I'm fine." Reid didn't sound like even he believed it, in that moment. "Did you tell..." His mind blanked for a few seconds. "Fitz? Frank was worried if he didn't get home..."  
  
"Fitz is aware we're taking good care of you and Frank, and he doesn't have to mount a heroic rescue or anything." Garcia finally stopped typing. "Ah! Okay, that's a bit of a drive, but it's open. Tell me what you need."  
  
"You shop, I'll drive. Tell me where to go pick it up," JJ offered, patting Reid's shoulder. "We've got you, Spence. And I really think you need a few days off."  
  
"A case I wasn't supposed to be involved in just landed on my doorstep. I'm getting time off whether I want it or not," Reid groaned, as that finally occurred to him. "Pants. I need pants. I should probably wear something under those. A shirt would be nice. Socks. A toothbrush. Coffee." He paused, looking at JJ. "Coffee?"  
  
She laughed and squeezed his hand. "It won't be any good, but I'll get you whatever I can find."  
  
"I'll take it." Reid rubbed his face tiredly. "And Frank, if you can pry him away from Rossi."  
  
"I'll see what I can do," JJ promised.

* * *

In the end, Langly drove them home, after Rossi refused to let Reid leave until he promised he wouldn't drive. By the time Langly parked Reid's car by the warehouse, Reid was finally starting to look a little less distractable. Three empty coffee cups and an empty can of Jolt lay in a grocery bag between his feet.  
  
"Shit, I miss having a handicapped permit," Langly sighed, staring through the windshield at the side of the building. "Not that it matters, here."  
  
"Why would you...?" Reid squinted at him, trying to determine if he'd missed the setup for a punchline.  
  
"Real reason, or the one I tell everyone?" Langly asked, turning off the car.  
  
"That sounds like a trick question. Real reason."  
  
"Because when you do enough shit that involves people falling off things, getting stuck in things, getting their asses kicked by security, somebody has to be able to park close enough to the building that you can get everyone back in the van." Langly shook his head and opened the car door, keys in hand.  
  
"That actually makes sense." Reid admitted, before realising where Langly had parked. He gestured around them. "Is this safe?"  
  
"No, but Byers can fix that. I'm too burnt out to walk; you're too burnt out to walk. Let's just get inside, which is a lot safer than sitting out here." Langly got out of the car. "I'd say I can't believe they wouldn't let you drive, but I absolutely can. Three cups of coffee and you still look wasted."  
  
"Nightmares," Reid muttered, locking the door and accidentally slamming it behind himself. The sound made him flinch, but he didn't pause, following Langly up to the door.  
  
"Lemme in, assholes," Langly barked, leaning on the buzzer until the door slid open. He waved Reid in ahead of him, mostly to make sure Frohike didn't accidentally lock him out.  
  
Byers met them as the inner door slid open, answering Langly's first question before it could be asked. "I shut down the PBX after I made the call. There's no tracing those numbers back here. They connect to nothing. I wouldn't have made a call at all, but at that hour, she'd already gone home."  
  
"Thank you," Reid said, quietly.  
  
Langly slipped an arm around Reid, with a look that said he wasn't sure where to start explaining. "I might actually owe you, this time, Byers. Seeing as it's actually not your fault this time."  
  
"It wasn't my fault most of the other times, either," Byers argued, closing the second door behind them. "And what's this I hear about you and _Kimmy_?"  
  
"Rumours." Langly shrugged and held out the keys. "Crazy stalker ex. Listen, I need you to move the car. Or something. Cover it? I have to go fall down and he's not allowed to drive right now."  
  
"I've had coffee. I could do it," Reid protested.  
  
"The last time you tried to function on nothing but adrenaline and coffee you started hallucinating. It was _yesterday_." Langly stepped back and folded his arms as Byers took the keys. "And you still haven't eaten."  
  
"I'll take care of it," Byers promised. "Frohike's frying eggs, by now. We figured you two probably hadn't eaten all night, and--"  
  
"I can't even think about food right now. Can't do it." Langly looked a bit grey at the idea.  
  
"Join us for ..." Byers counted on his fingers for a moment. "... breakfast, Dr Reid?"  
  
Before Reid could answer, Langly moved him out of the way and bolted for the bathroom.  
  
Reid blinked after him. "Is he okay?"  
  
"He will be." Byers shook his head. "You'll get used to that. I assume you'll be getting used to that."  
  
"If he's even willing to look at me, after all this, yeah."  
  
"I've seen him get like this, before, but never for another person that wasn't me or Frohike." Byers waited until Reid was looking at him. "He respects you."  
  
"Perhaps not the word I'd have chosen," Reid admitted, looking back after Langly.  
  
"It should be." Byers paused for that to sink in. "I'm going to go do something about your car, before the sun comes up. You should give me your shirt. The cameras don't see so well at night."  
  
Langly came back from the bathroom, wiping his mouth, to find Reid standing shirtless in the front room, holding Byers's shirt in one hand. "Oh, shit, right. And that is why Byers is handling this. He still has the brains to think of that."  
  
"I think he also just gave me the intimidating dad speech about you." Reid smiled weakly and let Langly lead him toward the kitchen.  
  
"I am gonna put my foot so far up his ass..."  
  
"I think it's sweet. They're your family, and they care about you." Reid gestured ahead of them to where Frohike could be heard cooking, the sound of sizzling and spatula meeting pan audible through the room between them and the kitchen.  
  
"The day you call Frohike 'mom', we're done," Langly muttered.  
  
Frohike was frying bacon as they entered the kitchen, the island already laid with pancakes and scrambled eggs enough for six people, as far as Reid could tell, the coffee maker still warming a fresh pot.  
  
"You and _Kimmy_?" Frohike made a face as soon as he spotted Langly.  
  
"How bad does my taste look?" Langly started to look grey again at the smell of eggs and bacon. "I'm going to go get him a shirt, because Byers is smart and also an asshole, today."  
  
Reid continued to clutch Byers's shirt to his chest as he watched Langly storm deeper into the house.  
  
"Sit, sit! Have a pancake. Have six. I made enough." Frohike swapped the bacon in the pan and wiped his hands on the apron he wore over his pyjamas. "We've been listening to the interviews as they were digitised."  
  
Reid's smile was painful to observe.  
  
"Oh. Right. Nobody cares about that part. I just meant it was a great story and I'm glad you're still here to tell it." Frohike pushed his glasses up with his shoulder. "He likes you. God knows why, but he does."  
  
"Thank you, but I already got the 'so you're dating my daughter' from Byers," Reid replied, tartly, smile sharpening as if to cut glass.  
  
Frohike guffawed, leaning on the edge of the stove with one hand. "Okay, that's why."  
  
Langly returned, finally wearing his own pants and carrying a black t-shirt for Reid. He looked between Frohike's cackling over the bacon and Reid's stiff spine and cutting smile. "Okay, something just happened in here."  
  
"Yes, it did. You went to get me a shirt." Reid held out a hand and Langly put the shirt in it, with a heavy helping of side-eye.  
  
"He's good. I can see what you like about him." Frohike turned off the stove and shovelled the last of the bacon onto a plate he turned to set on the island.  
  
Langly looked Reid over, a treacherous smile hovering at the corners of his mouth. "No you can't. Promise."  
  
Reid pulled the shirt down, sputtering. "What?"  
  
Langly shrugged innocently. "There's a lot more to you than a smart mouth."  
  
"Oh. Yes. Usually." Reid looked down at himself. The shirt bore a stylised image of a penguin hitting a glasses-wearing man with a bat. He'd go with it. At least it smelled clean.  
  
Frohike dumped bacon on the plate in front of Reid, and Langly followed it with pancakes.  
  
"You haven't eaten in like a day. It's why you keep wobbling," Langly pointed out. "Put food in your face."  
  
Frohike dropped a single pancake on Langly's plate. "Eat a pancake, Langly."  
  
"No." Langly recoiled, offended at the idea.  
  
"One pancake. If you can tell him to eat, I can tell you to eat."  
  
"I'm not eating a fucking pancake. I'm not eating at all."  
  
"He's right, you know." Byers came back in and rescued his shirt from the cupboard handle where Reid had hung it. "Put a pancake on it and you'll stop throwing up. And you know that, because it always works."  
  
"Yeah, well, I haven't always been shot at in the last twelve hours," Langly snapped, rolling up the pancake and jabbing it at Byers. "If I throw this up, it's going on you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something something herding cats. Apparently this just decided it needs one more chapter to get where it's going.
> 
>  ~~Me: Oh, this'll only be like six chapters~~  
>  Reality: FOURTEEN CHAPTERS LATER...


	15. Chapter 15

After a large breakfast and a hot shower, Reid lay in Langly's bed, staring up at the high ceiling, spotted with glow-stars that marked the paths of cables left from half-finished projects. Langly sat beside him, in just a shirt, taping bandages around his hand and arm, where the bleeding had started again in the shower. Maybe he shouldn't have scrubbed so hard, but he wanted the day out of his skin.  
  
"Do I ask why you have a case of bandages in your bathroom?"  
  
"Obvious reasons." Langly shrugged and tore another piece of tape with his teeth. "There's no such thing as careful enough -- especially on the third day. Why even take the chance?"  
  
"The extended box of bandaids," Reid joked and Langly nodded.  
  
"Pretty much." Langly gathered what he'd been using and stretched to set it all on a table at the foot of the bed, with his glasses, next to a partially disassembled laptop and three cans labelled in Japanese. "She did a number on you."  
  
"I shouldn't have gotten so close. That was the point of using the pyjama pants -- steady pressure and a way to protect myself. So much for that." Reid sighed and let his eyes close. "She knew. Didn't even grab for the cloth, just straight back into my hands. My wrists feel like someone took a nailgun to them."  
  
"They don't look much better," Langly admitted, trying to untangle the blankets, before he stretched out next to Reid.  
  
Reid raised a hand to Langly's face, fingertips lingering uncertainly, and Langly started to laugh.  
  
"Do you remember yesterday, at all? Before there was someone shooting at us?"  
  
Reid blinked at him, round-eyed in confusion. "Enough of it, I think. Why? What did I do?"  
  
"You--" Langly had to stop to catch his breath. "You looked right at me and--" Another round of cackles interrupted the sentence. "You said I was beautiful. Twice."  
  
"Because you were."  
  
Langly swallowed the end of a laugh. "Are you sure you didn't get hit in the head? No, I'm seriously worried."  
  
Reid squeezed his eyes shut. "I wish I'd taken a picture, so I could show you."  
  
"I don't think hallucinations show up on film."  
  
"I wasn't-- Okay, I was probably hallucinating, but the light was perfect. I wasn't hallucinating that. You were glowing -- this fantastic soft halo around your whole body. I could see the texture of your skin at the edges, against the light. It was how I could tell you were real." Reid opened one eye. "You were breathtaking. Limned. Liminal and luminous."  
  
"And now that you've had a nap, I'm right back to hatchet-faced, right?" Langly pressed the back of two fingers to Reid's forehead, checking for a fever.  
  
"I can still see it, when I look at you. Memory's like that."  
  
Langly gave up. "What else do you remember?"  
  
"Mostly actually hallucinating. Feathered serpents and the seventy-two voices of the Archangel Gabriel." Reid shrugged. "In the interview, I said I remembered getting home and talking to you, but everything after I sat down was gone."  
  
"Yeah, I glossed over that part. I was tired. You were tired. Who remembers?" Langly nudged a knee between Reid's thighs. "Your friend Agent Rossi gave me a stern talking to about it. Off the record. You think Byers does intimidating dad? Apparently you have intimidating mafia fed dad. I just want it on record that I am, in fact, at least slightly intimidated and will be standing on the other side of you if I'm ever in a room with him again. Possibly behind you. Possibly just leaving the room."  
  
"Rossi?" Reid groaned and covered his face with both hands. "Is there anyone who doesn't know?"  
  
"I guess the neighbours really wanted you to shut up." Langly cleared his throat. "I was there. You were ... I could never figure out why porn was so loud. Nobody actually sounds like that, right? Well, no, nobody actually sounds like that, but you're deafening, when you're tired. And it's kind of hot."  
  
"I am moving to Alaska in the morning," Reid mumbled into his hands. "I should just be glad it's Rossi and not JJ or Garcia who gave you the talk, though I'm still not sure how I feel about Rossi knowing that much about my sex life. Or that I even have a sex life."  
  
Langly cleared his throat again. "I heard it from all of them. Agent Jareau came to get me, and I was like, 'oh good, it's the pretty blonde who cared more about the scene than my naked ass'. And then, I'm pretty sure she very politely implied she'd shoot me if I ever wronged you in any way she heard about."  
  
Reid peered over the tips of his fingers in stark horror. "That sounds like JJ. And Garcia?"  
  
"Listen, that woman is terrifying, and if I wasn't already so into you, she could violate my systems any time, but if I get the slightest hint she's angry I'm moving to Brazil. What is it with the two of you and the creepy smiling? You're like evil twins and I'm not sure which one is more evil, but she's a little higher on my list right now, because I value the continued integrity of both my network and my testicles."  
  
"I don't know if I'd call it _creepy_ smiling. But, it works, doesn't it? She scared the shit out of you."  
  
"It's hot when _you_ do it. Just not... _at me_."  
  
Reid was silent for a bit, eyes on Langly, but not seeing. Finally, he reached out and wrapped an arm around Langly. "I'm so glad you're alive."  
  
"Yeah, me too. After this many years, that would've been a little anticlimactic. Famed hacker found naked and dead in apartment of equally naked and dead federal agent." Langly snorted. "No, no, I need a better end than that. I want something that gets at least two months of tabloid exposure. Aliens. Giant sea turtles. Exposing government investments in international genocide."  
  
"Genocidal giant space turtles." Reid nodded sagely and Langly laughed.  
  
"See this? This is what I like about you." Langly slid a hand down Reid's leg. "I mean, there's other things, but..."  
  
"You make me smile." Reid nudged Langly's face with his nose, stealing a quick kiss. "And you haven't told me to stop talking, yet."  
  
"You need higher standards."  
  
"So do you. _Three minutes_?"  
  
"You're never going to let that go, are you?"  
  
"You could give me something better to hold on to."  
  
"Some greater virtue?" Langly teased, pressing on Reid's shoulder with one finger until he took the hint and rolled onto his back. "You awake enough for this?"  
  
"Perhaps unsurprisingly, I don't actually care." Reid smiled wickedly, trying to convince himself he'd be able to face Byers and Frohike over lunch. "Unless you care about the two of them overhearing."  
  
Langly took a moment to come to a conclusion. "Maybe," he admitted, straddling Reid's hips. "It'd stop Frohike calling me a virgin."  
  
Reid covered his face with both hands and cackled. And then the laugh suddenly stopped. "You know, if he's said it since yesterday morning, you'd have been called both a virgin and a whore in the same day."  
  
"You see what I put up with?" Langly sighed, resting his elbows to either side of Reid's head as he leaned down for a kiss. "Good thing someone around here properly appreciates my talents."  
  
Reid's hands caught Langly's thighs, appreciatively caressing them. "You mean my neighbours?"  
  
Burying his face against Reid's neck, Langly laughed hysterically. "Jesus christ. Fuck your neighbours."  
  
"I'd rather fuck you, if it's all the same."  
  
That set off another round of laughing, leaving Langly gasping and gulping air, as he pushed himself up and reached for a drawer on the table next to the bed. After a moment's fumbling and cursing, he reached back to grab Reid's hand, pressing something into it.  
  
The first thing Reid noticed was that it was a bottle, probably of lube, given the slick drip down the outside. The second thing was that it was half empty.  
  
Langly watched those revelations cross Reid's face as he lowered his hips into reach. "I'm a lot less ascetic about my indulgences."  
  
Reid let his eyes close as he concentrated on getting his hands where he wanted them and not pouring lube all over the bed. "Indulgences?" His slick fingers teased as he snapped the bottle shut with the other hand and let it fall.  
  
"You know what I like," Langly purred, back bowing until his chest pressed flat against Reid's, only the shirt between them. "Hard and fast. Leave me raw and dripping. I've been trying to do it to myself for years, but there's nothing like the real thing. You can't fake someone else panting against your back." His breath stuttered as Reid's fingers pressed in ways he'd really only ever touched himself. "And you... You are such a fucking tease. You drag it out forever."  
  
"I am not a tease!" Reid complained, jabbing his clean thumb just in from the point of Langly's hip.  
  
Langly squirmed and laughed. "You _are_! You're a horrible fucking tease!" He paused to catch his breath. "And I love every second of it."  
  
"Just for that, I should be. See how long I can keep you going." A tiny, wicked smile touched Reid's lips, as his fingers toyed with Langly's flesh.  
  
"Oh my god. Don't. I'll die. Right here. I'm not that young any more. I can't take the strain. I have asthma." Langly buried his face against Reid's hair, shoulders shaking with an unvoiced laugh.  
  
Reid stopped moving as curiosity got the better of him. "Do you really?"  
  
Langly stretched for the drawer he'd pulled the lube from and held up an inhaler, the label printed in Spanish. "Maybe," he said, letting it drop back into the drawer, where it could be heard to hit a few soft-surfaced objects before reaching the shallow bottom.  
  
"Oh, well, maybe I should be merciful, then, and take it easy on you."  
  
Langly had just enough time to realise his mistake, before Reid's touch grew even lighter and more delicate. "Is it manslaughter if you kill me like this?"  
  
"Involuntary, at best." One of Reid's fingers traced the edge of Langly's hole, keeping Langly's mind off his other hand. "Probably death by misadventure."  
  
The splash of cold lube against hot skin was the only warning Langly got before Reid's freshly-slicked fingers plunged into him. His back bowed and his eyes rolled back, but not before he caught the look of detachment on Reid's face. He took a few shuddering breaths and tipped his hips to better accommodate the sudden, delicious manhandling of his insides.   
  
"You okay?" he managed, on only the second try.  
  
"Is it that obvious?" Reid asked, not pausing for even a moment. "I'm trying not to think about it, so I can enjoy it. Do you have any idea how soft you are, right here?"  
  
Reid's fingers curled, and Langly's entire body shuddered, an incoherent few syllables that might have been 'oh my god' falling quietly from his mouth. Further conversation was reduced to gasps and muffled sounds of frustration and desperation, as Langly's thighs clenched, muscles rolling, evidence of his desire pooling on Reid's skin.  
  
Langly finally snapped back to his senses as Reid's other hand tucked between them, fingers clutching them both together, somewhat awkwardly. His own hand dropped so fast the bed squeaked at the shift in weight, and he grabbed Reid's wrist. "I will last all of five seconds if you do that."  
  
Reid tried to blow fallen hair off his face and failed. "Something something hard, fast, wrung out like a wet sponge?"  
  
Langly swallowed hard, considering it, and his throat clicked as he opened his mouth again. "You need to know that if I die with your dick up my ass, Frohike's putting it on the front page, next week. 'Eternal Virgin Lured to His Own Death By Federal Sex Vampire'. It's not going to be pretty."  
  
Reid turned his head to the side not to choke on his own laughter or Langly's hair. "I'll take that as a no."  
  
"That is absolutely not a no. That is a please be aware of what you're about to do to me, and possibly yourself." Langly cleared his throat and let go of Reid's wrist. "The only question is whether it's going to be as good a story as genocidal space turtles."  
  
Reid laughed until he wheezed, until Langly clenched around his fingers to remind him what they were doing. Within seconds, he'd caught his breath and Langly was once again strung tight and writhing against him. He tried to keep the touch between them to just fingers, to keep the bandage across his palm off Langly's flesh, at least, and after a few tries, he figured out he could just press down, pinning them both in the slick, spreading puddle Langly had already left on his skin.  
  
It was all Langly could do to contain the deafening sound of raw desire coiled in his lungs. He swallowed against it, once and then again, hand clenching the sheets behind Reid's head hard enough they untucked from the bed.  
  
"Please," he breathed, clenching tight as his hips jerked just once, thigh muscles rolling again and again. His back bowed so sharply a twinge shot through his hips, and he felt his pulse quicken, the warm pool spreading, splashing up across Reid's chest.  
  
Reid's fingers stilled, slowly increasing the pressure on one small spot, until Langly sobbed against his neck, desperate and shivering. "Still want more?"  
  
It took a few tries before Langly remembered how to use his tongue. " _God_ , yes. What the hell kind of question is that?"  
  
"Then you should roll over, so I can stop breathing your hair." Reid nudged Langly with his hip.  
  
Langly whined, but grabbed Reid's shoulder and pulled him over, a flicker of loss crossing his face as Reid's fingers slid out.  
  
"Two things: my hands are gross and I'm trying not to touch your hair--"  
  
Langly pointed off the side of the bed. "There's probably an equally gross towel, and if there's not, you can use my sock. Hot water wash is a great thing."  
  
Reid found the sock, first, reflecting, as he wiped his hands, that it was the first time he'd ever considered someone else's dirty sock an improvement. "And a condom."  
  
Langly gestured to the drawer he'd gotten the lube from. "There's nothing I can promise is in good shape. I couldn't tell you the last time I bought a box, but I think there's still a few in there. On the other hand, we've been over how utterly and entirely unlikely a disease existing between the two of us even is..."  
  
Reid looked Langly in the eyes and held up his bandaged forearms.  
  
"Again? You already bled on me. I wrapped that, remember?" Langly shrugged. "But, your choices are bad or nothing."  
  
"Or not doing this."  
  
"Or not doing this," Langly agreed, trying to remember to keep breathing.  
  
Reid closed his eyes and took a long breath. "Bad," he decided, reaching for the drawer. "It's not just that. It's... I just... My fingers... and that's not..."  
  
Langly winced as the rest of that thought filled itself in. "Right. Bad it is."  
  
"Thank you." Reid leaned down to kiss Langly as he sorted out the condom. "Still want me after all that?"  
  
Langly pulled the bottle of lube out from where he'd rolled over on it and smacked it into Reid's hand. "This is as close to commitment as you're getting out of me," he teased, twisting to tuck his heels under his ass.  
  
"I'll take it." Reid flicked the bottle open with his thumb, eyes taking in Langly sprawled under him, t-shirt rucked up across his not quite concave belly, the bottom damp where it rolled up just below his ribs, on one side.  
  
Langly's hands clenched nervously as Reid's eyes lingered on his half-clothed body. How had he not turned off the lights? Bandages. Right. This was stupid. He was never leaving the lights on again. Assuming there was an again. And then Reid pushed in, and all of Langly's doubts vanished, along with his ability to form coherent sentences.  
  
"Oh my holy jesus please god yes just _do me_!" The words poured out all at once, each barely distinguishable from the next.  
  
"And now who's having visions?" Reid teased, leaning forward for a better angle, one hand to either side of Langly's chest.  
  
Any answer Langly may have had was lost to the first roll of Reid's hips. His breath caught in his throat and his vision went white. By the time he found all the parts of his body again, his heart was pounding in time to Reid's thrusts. His body protested dimly that it had already performed as required and would not be doing that again, but molten pleasure still licked along his nerves, too much to handle and not enough to satisfy. Somewhere in all of it, he'd lost track of his mouth, which spilled ragged sounds of pleasure and demands for more and harder, as Reid fucked the very breath out of him.  
  
Reid watched Langly's body tighten under him, head rolling back against the bed to bare his neck, one hand clawing at the top of the mattress, thighs tense as steel. As Langly's hips dropped, Reid nearly choked on his own tongue, one hand springing up to clutch at Langly's hip. Some inhuman sound wrenched out of him along with what felt like most of his organs as he felt himself throb against Langly's insides, finally just out of time with Langly's body as a fresh spurt dripped down the bottom curve of Langly's ribs, on one side.  
  
Langly managed something between a huff and a hum, trying to find his tongue and have an opinion.  
  
Reid finished the sentence Langly hadn't voiced with a breathy laugh.  
  
Langly nodded. "Mmm," he decided, sliding a hand up Reid's arm to tug at his shoulder.  
  
They lay together, panting, until Langly's legs started to go numb. He could fix that, but it would probably cause Reid to move, and the last thing he wanted was that cold flash and the feeling his guts were going to fall out his ass. He was getting spoilt for the luxury of _not_ getting reamed against a wall.  
  
"Just so you know? If you keep fucking me like that, I'll give you forever." Langly laughed breathlessly.  
  
"Have I officially convinced you of the innate superiority of fifteen minutes or more?" Reid lifted his head and propped it on one hand, elbow tucked under Langly's arm.  
  
"I'll give you circumstantial superiority. You'll have to fight me for innate. There's a time and a place." A slow, mischievous smile crept across Langly's lips.  
  
"Reckless and dangerous ideas. I don't know if I'm ready for that, but I think I might enjoy hearing about them." Reid traced a finger along Langly's cloth-covered collarbone. "Speaking of ideas, you're on top, next time."  
  
"Excuse me?" Langly blinked up at Reid, primly offended.  
  
"Didn't you say you were going to show me how patient you were with my teasing?" Reid fluttered his eyelashes and smiled smugly. "You make it look like such a good time, I thought it might be time to try it."  
  
"I... That is... I am..." Langly found one of his hands and used it to rub his face. "I would like this to be a good idea, but I'm going to be like twelve seconds of disappointment."  
  
"Doesn't have to end at disappointment." Reid rolled his hips and finally slid out, prompting a dizzied flinch from Langly.  
  
"There went my blood pressure and maybe my liver." Langly squeezed his eyes shut and finally unfolded his legs, nudging Reid to the side. "Okay, now that I can breathe. _Maybe_. You have to have slept first. I have to have slept first. I want condoms that aren't a disaster, first, so we can stop having that argument. And I'm making use of something in that drawer so you don't have to wait for me to catch up, after I ruin your dreams of a long, hard romp."  
  
"Challenge accepted." Reid tied the condom and dropped it onto the dirty sock, before he pulled the blanket up from where Langly had folded it aside. "Definitely starting to like you."  
  
"I think it's a little late for 'starting'," Langly retorted, tossing a leg over Reid's hip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your eternal patience. I am putting this fic in park. (Yes, there's probably more fic in this stupid series, but I have to go do my actual job, now, and possibly also sleep.)


End file.
